Six weeks ago we announced D-Installer 0.7 and a lot has happened since then. The most important news is that we just released a new prototype with version 0.8, integrating several exciting new features we will go through in this post. But this prototype is not only important because of those features, but also because it will be the last D-Installer release! Fear not, we are not abandoning the project... quite the opposite.
AutoYaST is a crucial tool for our users, including customers and partners. So it was clear from the beginning that D-Installer should be able to install a system in an unattended manner.
This article describes the status of this feature and gives some hints about our plans. But we want to emphasize that nothing is set in stone (yet), so constructive comments and suggestions are more than welcome.
For D-Installer we already have a Ruby CLI that was created as a proof of concept. Then as part of of the hackweek we created another one in Rust to learn a bit about Rust and get our hands dirty. Now that we are familiar with both, we want to measure the overhead of calling D-Bus methods in Rust and Ruby, to make sure that if we continue with Rust, we won't be surprised by its speed. speed (hint: we do not expect it, but expectations and facts may be different).
As D-Installer consists of several components like D-Bus backend, CLI or web frontend, we see a need to test in CI that each component can start and communicate properly with each other. For this we use a test framework and more importantly GitHub CI where we need a systemd container which is not documented at all. In the following paragraphs we would like to share with you how we did it so that so that each of you can be inspired by it or use it for your own project.
Although we have been actively working on YaST and D-Installer, we have been silent since the beginning of December. We are sorry for that! Today we are resuming our blogging activity announcing the availability of D-Installer 0.7. Let's look at what it is new and what you can expect from the upcoming releases.
Now that the headline got your attention, let's start with the good news - D-Installer development is progressing just fine. What's the matter then? To answer that question is important to make a difference between D-Installer itself and the live ISO image we provide for everyone to test it.
It is our pleasure to announce the availability of the first installation image based on D-Installer. Since our initial announcement in January, we have been working on going from a non-working proof-of-concept to something that you can actually use.
As you may know, YaST is not only a control center for (open)SUSE Linux distributions, but it is also the installer. And, in that regard, we think it is a competent installer. However, time goes by, and YaST shows its age in a few aspects.