On Tue, 2004-02-24 at 13:42, Philip Rowlands wrote: > On Mon, 23 Feb 2004, seth vidal wrote: > > [XML-ize kickstart config] > >You could also, potentially, do cased dependencies in the kickstart - > >which would add flexibility and power. > > > >Is this worth thinking about? > > I vote against. > > I regard kickstart files as the "66.6%" solution to automated installs. > Not too braindead, not too powerful, but more useful than not. Where > kickstart doesn't fit the bill, the %pre and %post hooks allow infinite > tinkering. > > The raison d'être of a kickstart file is to answer the questions the > installer would ask. What do you want to install? Where am I reading > from? Where am I writing it to? plus enough basic configuration to get > past the first boot and be happily running and networked. > > Why add complexity? Do the gains outweigh the costs? With comps.xml, the > i18n issues and package markup persuaded the anaconda developers that > it was a worthwhile change. > > Permit me to throw in some "cons" for balance: > - Freeform XML cannot be parsed by coreutils as easily as LF-delimited > files. Automating the automation becomes more difficult, as kickstart > file generators/filters need to be XML-aware. > - Learning curve goes up. Today, the newbie can take the generated > kickstart file from his last install, open up everyone's favourite > s1-kickstart2-options.html, and start to tweak. > > If Word can do everything .txt files can (and more!), shouldn't we all > be using Word? (Or domain-specific Markup Languages?) 2 aspirins good, 5 > aspirins better? > > Do you see the advantage of XML in the robust layout, the expressive > markup available through metadata, or just (duck!) because everything > seems to be moving to use XML these days? > > Keep the automated installer small. Keep the complexity down. Put the > intelligence in the tools which write %pre scripts, %post scripts and > kickstart files themselves. > > Discuss :) > I agree with you wholeheartedly. Kickstart makes automatic builds simple. In comparison, SuSE's autoyast uses an XML control file. This is (in my experience) much harder to use, no more flexible and much easier to break. It takes 500 lines of xml to express the same as about 50 lines of ks.cfg, and there are no benefits I can see. If it ain't broke (and it ain't), don't fix it. -- Andy
