Tech Spec, System Installer

[Christian Schaller]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Chris Murphy" <lists at colorremedies.com>
> To: "Discussions about development for the Fedora desktop" <desktop at lists.fedoraproject.org>
> Sent: Friday, February 21, 2014 12:14:44 AM
> Subject: Re: Tech Spec, System Installer
> 
> 
> On Feb 20, 2014, at 2:28 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> > 
> > You might need to provide more details and background in posts like
> > this, Chris, considering the context. I don't think the desktop team is
> > as familiar with the ins and outs of installer partitioning as the
> > anaconda and QA teams. They don't deal with it every day. :)
> 
> OK I'm not sure how or what to provide that wouldn't also be obscenely
> verbose.
> 
> My premise is that the present installer paths (Automatic and Manual) do not
> constitute limiting the user interaction to the minimum. But maybe all or
> most WG members consider the installer already meets these requirements?
> 
> For comparison, by at least two orders of magnitude, the Windows and OS X
> installers are more minimalist. They each offer a handful of installed
> outcomes (including dual boot), whereas Anaconda Automatic/guided path alone
> offers dozens of outcomes, and the Manual/custom paths offers hundreds
> possibly infinite.
> 
> QA presently lacks the resources to test all possible installer outcomes. In
> fact it's likely that most outcomes aren't tested, and even if not certainly
> a significant amount aren't tested. This directly impacts user experience
> because for those untested outcomes they are actually the tester, possibly
> for the first time. That's also not minimum contact especially if they get a
> crash and have to start over, or the resulting installation doesn't work. I
> think it's sane for users to expect everything presented in a GUI installer
> is at least somehow minimally tested, yet QA simply can't make that claim
> right now.
> 
> So should the installer be permitted to enable users to created untested
> (actually untestable in some cases) outcomes? I'd say no, but that's my own
> bias. So what's the WG's bias? What do they mean by "the minimum" for user
> interaction with the installer?
> 
I agree with your bias, I think it would be good if you since you are a domain 
expert here maybe come up with a more detailed text proposal for this part of
the spec?