Post-Lenny ("Squeeze") D-I development

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$/!\$ NOTE: this is not a wish list

Big changes we need help with

Switch from console-data to console-setup. (SamuelThibault)
- See status on ../ConsoleSetupSwitch

Goals someone is working on

Persistent device naming for disks (ColinWatson)
- Need support in bootloaders (for grub, can be done by moving to to GRUB2).
- Use /dev/disk/by-id/ in grub-pc/install_devices debconf template and grub-pc.postinst.
- Default to using UUID= (389881)
- UUIDs on swap needs a busybox patch (531572)
- Use UUID= in /etc/crypttab. (done) (UUID=... works in post-install systems -- PaulWise)
Switch to udhcpc DHCP client from busybox (LukClaes)
- Needs testing
- We'll make it default in daily builds
- activated in busybox 1:1.13.3-1
Add ext4 support (ColinWatson)
- Support is there; testing very welcome
- Needs support in bootloaders (research); need to prevent use as /boot or root with bootloaders that can't handle it.
- Blocked by 511207, 529363, 511224
- Requires kernel support done and appropriate kernel udeb changes done

Completed

Finish last bits of UdebSupport (udeb transition) (done: support in britney 1 and 2)

Other goals

General cleanup (LukClaes)
- removal of obsolete packages?
- general code cleanup, e.g. old backwards compatibility hacks
- done renaming s390-sysconfig-writer
Improve support for Intel-based Apple MacBook systems; current support is a bit of a kludge and needs restructuring (ColinWatson has patches for gptsync for parted)
Install partman-ext3 by default to have it also in lowmem installs
Try to get some issues in libparted fixed: 406680, 328629, 377263 (OtavioSalvador)
Add PlayStation 3 support 514055. (Wartan Hachaturow and Hector Oron)
- Removal of “Install Other OS” feature in firmware 3.0
Extend accessibility support - discussion . Preliminary investigation on a speakup+espeakup+sound drivers solution done, see results (SamuelThibault). Full orca screen reading would be nice but would bring a huge lot more deps.
Split the initrd into three. The accessibility project needs this to happen (SamuelThibault)
- the 1st containing the basic system
- the 2nd containing drivers for the latest hardware (so only this "initrd" needs modification for new hardware)
  FJP: is this even realistic?
- the 3rd being language support, which only gets loaded if enough memory is available - more detailed plans for this
Don't forget reinstating translation for grub-installer/grub2_instead_of_grub_legacy and grub-installer/grub_not_mature_on_this_platform (ChristianPerrier)

Wishlist-type goals

includes supplemental repository support for udebs (BastianBlank). Bastian Blank (waldi) has pending work for this but the dependency resolver is missing on the new data structures.
Make os-prober readonly ( 418163)
- Might be better to put "blockdev" in busybox than to get a new udeb, see http://people.ubuntu.com/~cjwatson/busybox.blockdev.diff
- Some filesystems might ignore the RO flag, but it's still better than nothing:
  - Taking care of the flag: ext3, reiserfs, xfs,
  - NOT taking care:
    - jfs: seems to handle the "ro" option correctly
    - ntfs: seems to call ntfs_write_volume_flags unconditionnaly, see fs/ntfs/super.c:526)
    - hfsplus: driver does not support journaled HFS+ at the moment, so no i
Allow selecting disks with GRUB with multiple controllers. Needs to have grub-installer show a list of disks to install on if more than one disk controller is detected; lilo already has code for selecting a target which might be nice to use as well. should be covered by by-id in GRUB