Create test for text-mode setup bootstrapper

[rozniak]

Need to test the waters on how text-mode setup, and the setup bootstrapping will work.

Basically setup has to be bootstrapped from a system where there can only be minimal assumptions. Will get something working presumably using /bin/dash (cannot rely on Bash in the final setup bootstrapper) to probe things and get stuff moving.

Will need to be script based, cannot use pre-compiled binaries for setup due to systems that may use different libc implementations I believe (musl in the case of Alpine Linux).

[rozniak]

Rough plan for setup:

• Running bootstrapper
  • Identify distro, export env vars + check minimum deps to begin (eg. Python)
  • No display - go straight to text-mode
  • Display present - launch setup autorun for typical 'upgrade' path, copy entire setup tree to disk (because we could be running from an ISO), add setup to init scripts/systemd to launch on next boot into text-mode
• Text-mode setup should install bare minimum deps to be able to start graphical mode setup - add graphical mode setup to init scripts/systemd for reboot
• Graphical mode setup can be a compiled program since at this point the system should have the deps installed, guess this could just be like a minimal env with just X starting with the setup program
  • This phase should install remaining components, perhaps give user option for components ala Win9x used to?
  • Consider the AUR - see end of comment
  • Configuration of XFCE/session complete in this phase
• Chain next boot into OOBE (future work)

Need to consider the AUR, which is another reason I think graphical mode should be compiled/packaged so it can be installed. Should provide some simple shell script that is responsible for chaining phases into the init system which can be run by AUR users to simply skip straight to the configuration portion of setup.

For AUR users it would be something like (setupx is the script here, not necessarily final):

• yay xfce-winxp-tc-git
• setupx --aur
• Reboot
• Should boot into graphical mode setup final phase that just completes the configuration and chains into OOBE

All theoretical, I haven't actually tested much of this and how to handle the various init systems supported. I think it should work but that it is the point of these bootstrap tests.

[rozniak]

Been chipping away at text-mode - bootstrapping into Python and using the curses library for the terminal stuff. Seems to work quite well, here's a couple screenshots (they are massive...)

Scripts might be a bit untidy, I don't write that much Python. As long as they work I suppose!

[rozniak]

Might merge the current work and look into testing out loading up graphical mode so we have stuff to work with.