propellor is d-i 2.0

I think I've been writing the second system to replace d-i with in my spare time for a couple months, and never noticed.

I'm as suprised as you are, but consider this design:

  • Installation system consists of debian live + haskell + propellor + web browser.

  • Entire installation UI consists of a web-based (and entirely pictographic and prompt based, so does not need to be translated) selection of the installation target.

  • Installation target can be local disk, remote system via ssh (wiping out crufty hacked-up pre-installed debian), local VM, live ISO, etc.

  • Really, no other questions. Not even user name/password! The installed system will only allow login via the same method that was used to install it. So a locally installed system will accept console/X login with no password and then a forced password change. Or a system installed via ssh will only allow login using the same ssh key that was used to install it.

  • The entire installation process consists of a disk format, followed by debootstrap, followed by running propellor in the target system. This also means that the installed system includes a propellor config file which now describes the properties of the system as installed (so can be edited to tweak the installation, or reused as starting point for next installation).

  • Users who want to configure installation in any way write down properties of system using a simple propellor config file. I suppose some people still use more than one partiton or gnome or some such customization, so they'd use:

main :: IO
main = Installer.main
    & Installer.partition First "/boot" Ext3 (MiB 256)
    & Installer.partition Next "/" Ext4 (GiB 5)
    & Installer.partition Next "/home" Ext4 FreeSpace
    & Installer.grubBoots "hd0"
    & os (System (Debian Stable) "amd64")
    & Apt.stdSourcesList
    & Apt.installed ["task-gnome-desktop"]
  • The installation system is itself built using propellor. A free feature given the above design, so basically all it will take to build an installation iso is this code:
main :: IO
main = Installer.main
    & Installer.target CdImage "installer.iso"
    & os (System (Debian Stable) "amd64")
    & Apt.stdSourcesList
    & Apt.installed ["task-xfce-desktop", "ghc", "propellor"]
    & User.autoLogin "root"
    & User.loginStarts "propellor --installer"
  • Propellor has a nice display of what it's doing so there is no freaking progress bar.

Well, now I know where propellor might end up if I felt like spending a month and adding a few thousand lines of code to it.

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