install-prompt for missing features (Was: Re: Pull in upstream before 9.1 code freeze?)

[Mike Meyer]

On Wed, 04 Jul 2012 16:01:40 -0700
Doug Barton <dougb at FreeBSD.org> wrote:

> On 07/04/2012 15:57, Yuri wrote:
> > On 07/04/2012 15:08, Doug Barton wrote:
> >> First, I agree that being able to turn it off should be possible. But I
> >> can't help being curious ... why would you *not* want a feature that
> >> tells you what to install if you type a command that doesn't exist on
> >> the system?
> > Given the potentially controversial nature of this feature, it's maybe
> > best to almost completely isolate it from the base system and make it
> > into a port.

My first thought was to suggest it be a port as well, but I'm not sure
that can be done sanely.

> Normally I would agree, but something like this would be *really*
> valuable to ease the transition for people coming from a Linux background.

So would installing all the GNU tools instead of our own. To me,
that's clearly a bad idea (yes, it's an ideological issue, but the
issue is UI design, *not* licenses).

For this kind of thing, I think a "linux tools" metaport (and
group/option in the installer) would be a better approach. Linux users
could then install one port, and possibly source a script in
/usr/local/etc in their .bashrc, and get a system/shell that acts as
much like some popular linux distro as the maintainers heart
desired. Nuts, it may even be easy to config it for different distros.

     <mike 
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/
Independent Software developer/SCM consultant, email for more information.

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