[OpenIndiana-discuss] Proposal: OpenIndiana Stable Branch

[Alasdair Lumsden]

Hi Gabriel,

On 01/17/11 10:07 AM, Gabriel de la Cruz wrote:
> Thanks!
> A place to start is a place to start, and an stable server release is
> the most urgent one among all the other options.

Great - thanks for the feedback!

> Some people is talking about the server-desktop question, I
> particularly liked the old Solaris software groups concept (reduced
> network, core, end user, entire)... woulnt it be posible to have a non
> stable distro featuring the full range of up to date software, and a
> stable conservative one (behind in innovation but ahead in stability)
> allowing to either just keep the fully suported core of software or to
> add as well a less supported desktop enviroment?. Wouldnt this be
> almost same effort, example:

Well, the thing is, this is already the case. All people have to do is 
use the Text Installer ISO (Or the Automated Installer ISO) - this 
installs a much smaller subset of software which doesn't include the 
full Gnome desktop software. Effectively the text installer ISO is the 
"server release" and the Live CD ISO is the "desktop release". Perhaps 
we need to name them such to avoid the confusion, as it seems a lot of 
people on-list are confused about this.

Unfortunately the Text Installer still installs quite a "fat" install, 
due to some packaging that needs improvement. Alan Coopersmith pointed 
us at some bugs on bugs.opensolaris.org related to this which was pretty 
helpful:

http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=7010355
  - splitting tk bindings out of the core python package

http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=7010324
  - splitting X apps out of the core groff package

http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6574610
  - splitting glib out of the gnome-base-libs package

The only differences between a server install and a desktop install are 
the packages installed, and they're already split up into fairly 
reasonable incorporations. I think the situation with OpenSolaris only 
having a graphical LiveCD for so long has led people to think that 
OpenSolaris and thus OpenIndiana is mainly a desktop OS.

So I am starting to think that we should rename the Live CD to 
OpenIndiana-Desktop and the Text Installer to OpenIndiana-Server.

Ideally the graphical installer, Caiman, would let you choose which 
package incorporations to install. But unfortunately I think it does a 
"dumb" install from a cpio archive.

Perhaps refactoring of Caiman is needed, where the Live CD ships with a 
pkg repo, starts a pkg server, and does an install from that. Not sure 
how feasible this would be. Given how complete pkg is, probably not all 
that hard.

Cheers,

Alasdair