Modular payload support?

[Brian C. Lane]

I had a half-baked idea this morning. I wonder if it would be worthwhile
to make the payloads more modular so that you could put together an
anaconda image that only supported deb packages for exampel. Right now
any new payload needs to be added to pyanaconda/anaconda.payload along
with the logic for selecting it.

Instead we could change payloads to a registration model, like
installclasses, and then call their probe() functions (with some kind of
weighting) and let them decide which one to use.

Ignoring the complications from different UI support :) this would allow
new methods to be dropped in by 3rd parties (like addons) without having
to modify the core anaconda code. It would also be possible to split out
the individual payloads into subpackages, allowing for simpler installer
images.

[Chris Lumens]

> Ignoring the complications from different UI support :) this would allow
> new methods to be dropped in by 3rd parties (like addons) without having
> to modify the core anaconda code. It would also be possible to split out
> the individual payloads into subpackages, allowing for simpler installer
> images.

I think this would definitely be worth investigating.

- Chris

[Matthew Miller]

On Mon, Dec 07, 2015 at 10:19:57AM -0800, Brian C. Lane wrote:
> Ignoring the complications from different UI support :) this would allow
> new methods to be dropped in by 3rd parties (like addons) without having
> to modify the core anaconda code. It would also be possible to split out
> the individual payloads into subpackages, allowing for simpler installer
> images.

Seems like a good way to encourage innovation for things like the
ostree/atomic payload feature.

[Chris Lumens]

> Ignoring the complications from different UI support :) this would allow
> new methods to be dropped in by 3rd parties (like addons) without having
> to modify the core anaconda code. It would also be possible to split out
> the individual payloads into subpackages, allowing for simpler installer
> images.

Okay, here's a more substantial comment:  As part of this, we'll need to
go through and make sure the payload API is really what we want, hide
stuff that really should be hidden, perhaps break parts out into
separate files and APIs, etc.  I think this is one part of anaconda
where we've always been able to get away with being a little sloppy
because we knew it'd only ever be us looking at it.

- Chris