[ Please respect reply-to, let's have this discussion on debian-boot ] Hello everybody,
debian-installer is using discover[1] to install some packages based on the hardware it discovers. Unfortunately, discover is dead upstream (Debian is the upstream really) and the hardware->package database is not maintained at all. In the last years, Petter Rheinholdtsen worked on isenkram[2] with a similar but a bit broader goal. I noticed it has better support of clouds and that it will install some virtualization/cloud-related packages automatically whereas discover does not. It also makes it easier to install the appropriate firmware packages. I would thus suggest that we consider replacing discover by isenkram-cli. Last time I discussed this with Petter, he was willing to do the ground work on the debian-installer side but he did not want to lead this discussion. I'm thus starting the discussion myself. I see mainly benefits to such a move. The only downside is that it would pull python by default. This entirely depends on whether we want to keep it installed or not. We could install it just to do a single scan and install pass during installation and then get rid of it (this would then likely be made configurable with a debconf preseed). Cheers, [1] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/discover [2] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer Support Debian LTS: https://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts.html Learn to master Debian: https://debian-handbook.info/get/
