Things we really should fix before rc2: - tasksel/aptitude problem that prevents installation of standard packages (fixed in aptitude 0.2.15.6-0.sarge3 in t-p-u) - aptitude bug that prevents tasks from working in some locales (#264716) (apparently fixed in aptitude 0.2.15.6-0.sarge3 in t-p-u) - finish 2.6.8 and 2.4.27 kernel upgrades, all applicable arches - fix syslinux parameter bug #269424 Things that would be nice for rc2, but can't block it: - pcmcia-cs resource range detection - X's failure to use read-edid at all (#264792) - s390-dasd lacks a progress bar while formating disks (fixed in trunk) - vmelilo-installer needs to remove no_bootloader from /target/etc/kernel-img.conf - whiptail breaks time zone selection for argintina, other bad bugs (fixed in whiptail 0.51.6-12) - gnome-cups-manager fix #271405 (ugly error on desktop install) (fixed in 0.22-2, not yet in testing) This TODO list can only touch on some larger issues, but there are a great many open bugs on various components of the installer. See all bugs tagged d-i in the BTS. Also, there are many unprocessed installation-reports bugs. Status for different parts of debian-installer. The numbers are approximate (as in +/- 50%) and may change in any direction, at any time. [0%] Not begun --------------------------------------------------------------------- - some architectures hurd-i386 (we will ship w/o this) sh (we will ship w/o this) [30%] Might need large rewrites. Current implementation might work by accident --------------------------------------------------------------------- - GUI frontend to cdebconf. There are some basic implementations. The trick is to make it a GUI that does not suck, while still using debconf underneath. - ppp support Not as important for analog dialup, as for ISDN, pppoe. [60%] Needs some work, but does its grunt work --------------------------------------------------------------------- - I18N Mostly done, still filling in minor holes. - translations Varying languages translated to varying degrees. http://people.debian.org/~seppy/d-i/translation-status.html - boot loader installers (lilo, grub, etc) Work, except for when they don't. See BTS. - anna Works, mostly. Needs support for Release files. Support for signed Release files would be cool, but needs gpgv-udeb. Needs to have load-installer properly split out of the anna binary to save space on root floppy. Or removed, not used anymore. - disk selector, partitioner We have switched to partman everything except a couple of subarches and s390. - bugreporter-udeb only supports saving to floppy, which many lack should offer a way to save via network or to usb stick - post-reboot configuration base-config is stable, though it could use more polish i18n is needed. Some questions repeat questions from d-i. - web site http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ Could be better laid out, lacking some sections, other parts are quite good. - archive integration No automatic propagation to testing. No source propagation for udeb sources! - pcmcia support Much improved, generally works now. Automatic PCI resource range exclusion based on probing still needed, work in progress. - low memory support Where "low" is 32-46 mb! Works, but user must be careful to set up swap ASAP. There is no sanity checking, and some bad failure modes. - user documentation Installation manual is up-to-date for i386. Needs sanity checking for other architectures. Translations need updates. - developer documentation We understand it, but casual hackers have a high barrier to doing simple things like using a custom kernel. - 2.6 support Works on i386, with minor bugs. Works on powerpc, at least newworld. Testing on other subarches needed, especially G5 and oldworld (with mkvmlinuz). - preseeding Some things still cannot be preseeded. This is generally a bug in the udeb's use of debconf. - some architectures i386 ia64 powerpc mips SGI (mips/r4k-ip22 and mips/r5k-ip22) - fix parted's DVH disk labels support (#239371) - install dvhtool Broadcom SWARM (mips/sb1-swarm-bn) - Needs a working boot loader in the archive Documentation, manual XXX the above may be somewhat out of date mipsel DECstation (mipsel/r3k-kn02 and mipsel/r4k-kn04) - cannot boot from CD (see end of #241231) Cobalt (mipsel/cobalt) - figure out whether to set link_in_boot=yes (see trunk/packages/rootskel/debian/templates-arch) - boot has to be ext2 -r 0 - support installs via SSH, w/o serial console - boot: use: execute rd_start=0x{initrd-start} rd_size=0x{initrd-size} console=ttyS0,{console-speed} - debconf should output progess on the LCD Documentation, manual XXX the above may be somewhat out of date m68k (some subarches) alpha sparc arm (some subarches) hppa amd64 (unofficial) s/390 lowmem issues On its first release, probably still some problems. [90%] Single missing important feature or bug. --------------------------------------------------------------------- - hw-detect Working but needs to be switched over to discover2 - iso-scan Works, but does not flag the disk the iso is mounted from as unusable by the rest of the installer. - netcfg Working, pending rewrite for IPv6. - bts Still need a non-manual way to tag our bugs. - language-chooser The perennial problem is how to order/present the list of languages. Many complaints, but it works. - base system installer It can break due to testing package churn. cdebootstrap would fix this; also debootstrap/apt/archive changes in progress to add Base: overrides to Packages files. [100%] Those shouldn't need to be touched any more (famous last words) --------------------------------------------------------------------- - udpkg - cd installs - net retriever - cdrom retriever - ethdetect - cdebconf - floppy retriever - main-menu - choose-mirror - busybox integration - install media build system - kernel-package integration - library reduction - wireless support Common problems and transitions =============================== This is a list of common mistakes that need to be corrected throughout the code base: * All debconf commands that INPUT, GO, GET or SET questions should check their return value. This is pure evil: debconf->command(debconf, "GET", "mirror/suite", NULL); /* unchecked return code ! */ asprintf(&command, "foo %s", debconf->value); system(command); * cdebconf's debconfclient.h has a set of macros for calling debconf (debconf_get() and so on) These should perhaps be used consistently throughout the code for clarity. * There needs to be a centralised logging method. Syslog will do, but we currently have a lot of nasty code that appends messages to /var/log/messages directly. All of that would be converted to pipe it to logger. However, this is a problem, because piping a command to logger loses the exit status of the command. Need some way to run a command, logging the ouput to syslog, w/o losing exit status. * udebs should not include md5sums files, or postrm, prerm, preinst scripts. This includes ones generated by debhelper. Linda will find these pretty well. * There is no need to set the seen flag anymore. All code that does so should be removed, unless that code is expected to also possibly run on a normal debian system (choose-mirror).