<tt><font size=2>> From: awilliam@redhat.com</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=2>> Date: 02/21/2014 17:05</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=2>> Subject: Re: [Base] Fedora Base Design Working
Group (2014-02-21) <br>
> meeting minutes and logs</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=2>> Sent by: devel-bounces@lists.fedoraproject.org</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=2>> <br>
> On Fri, 2014-02-21 at 16:38 -0500, John.Florian@dart.biz wrote:<br>
> <br>
> > > With the best of intentions, we'd gone from a reluctant
exception to the<br>
> > > 'no choice' design to a dropdown which included two very
different<br>
> > > complex choices: LVM and btrfs. So now the installer path
which was<br>
> > > originally supposed to be minimal-choice, very robust and
testable and<br>
> > > fixable, had become rather a lot more complex.<br>
> > <br>
> > Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.<br>
> <br>
> I don't think that precept applies very well to this area.<br>
> <br>
> The problem is that there are - and this is probably *literal*, not
a<br>
> rhetorical flourish - millions of Special Little Use Cases like yours<br>
> (the one below, snipped for brevity) out there. *You* want it to be
easy<br>
> to skip /home. *She* wants it to be easy to resize a Slackware install.<br>
> *That guy* wants to use btrfs. *My cat* likes RAID. It is becoming
very,<br>
> very clear that we just cannot undertake to support them all and<br>
> guarantee that they are all going to work in a release. It's just
_too<br>
> much work_. Everyone agrees that it would be nice if we could, but
then<br>
> everyone agrees that it'd be nice if I had a solid gold toilet.</font></tt>
<br>
<br><tt><font size=2>Brr... no thanks. Well okay, I'd take one for
the monetary value. :-)</font></tt>
<br>
<br><tt><font size=2>> Some<br>
> nice things just don't happen. We do not have the resources to be
in the<br>
> business of writing the world's biggest disk configuration tool and<br>
> guaranteeing that it'll never go wrong, which isn't *quite* what we're<br>
> currently trying to do, but it's not far from it.<br>
> <br>
> It's worth trying some other installers out, just to reset your<br>
> expectations. Have you seen the level of flexibility you get from<br>
> Ubuntu's interactive installer? Windows'? OS X's?</font></tt>
<br>
<br><tt><font size=2>Thank God no. I last touched Ubuntu about 7
years ago. The early days of FC were so not the RHL (e.g. 7.3) that
I'd loved so much. But then Ubuntu left me lacking in community.
I filed so many bugs that never received a single response. The
last time I installed Windows it required something like 20 1.4MB floppies
(and that was probably the best part of the whole experience). I've
only *used* a Mac twice, once with the originals back in the 80s(?) and
again in the 90s -- I've never installed any Apple OS. Too damned
different for this old dog.</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=2> <br>
> > I <br>
> > appreciate your QA angle here. Every condition in a code
path leads to <br>
> > exponential growth in testing.<br>
> <br>
> And development. This isn't just a QA problem. We do not have the<br>
> development resources to commit to all this stuff working reliably
every<br>
> six months.</font></tt>
<br>
<br><tt><font size=2>Here's where you lost me. Yes, anaconda is going
through a rewrite, but shouldn't all development be incremental improvement.
You make it sound like it has to be gutted and redone every release.</font></tt>
<br>
<br><tt><font size=2>IMHO, nothing kills corner cases like polymorphism.
Remove the conditions and you remove the dark corners where bugs
like to hide.</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=2><br>
> <br>
> > However, when I have my admin hat on, I <br>
> > want flexibility. I love LVM for that reason. However,
if I'm setting up <br>
> > simple VMs whose backend storage resides in a LV, I have no need
or desire <br>
> > for LVM within the VM.<br>
> <br>
> Does it hurt you to get it, though?</font></tt>
<br>
<br><tt><font size=2>Only in the sense you snipped out: resizing w/o LVM
is much simpler when disk is virtual, there's just fewer steps. As
I stated though, on the host I want/need LVM because in the physical world,
LVM makes life way more easier. Yeah, I can live with it in all cases,
but then I'm just as likely to do a complete reinstall of the VM as to
resize the undersized file system. However, that's only practical
because puppet is doing all the dirty work.</font></tt>
<br>
<br><tt><font size=2>Really my whole problem is MY problem though. I
just have committed to the time of completely automating kickstart script
generation and application. The GUI installer has been kind enough
to me that I always seem to have higher priorities (like keeping all my
services running atop the latest Fedora).</font></tt>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif"><br>
--<br>
John Florian</font>
<br>
<br>