Make userguide packages optional

[humdinger]

Now that the optional packages in Installer are working, we should put the userguide packages there. All the unneeded translated guides create quite some unnecessary data transfer when updated.

[bitigchi]

Ideally, only English and the selected locale (if there is) user guides should be installed by default.

[vidrep]

User guides in languages other than English could be split off into "Multinational" as an optional package.

[humdinger]

Grouping all non-English guides into one multinational optional package reliefs the English speaking users. All else would still have to download all remaining user guides. Guides will have to stay separated by language.

If the current locale can be determined (or guessed through online geo info), preselecting the relevant userguide would be nice. I suspect that is not often the case, when booting right into the Installer and wifi not been configured yet.

[pulkomandy]

I did not move them there because optional packages are not activated in the live cd. So people running the live CD would not have access to the user guide.

We should rather change how we version these packages: if no changes to the userguide files were made, no new userguide packages should be built. This way, they would be updated a lot less often, and people would stop complaining that they have to re-download them at every update.

[humdinger]

I did not move them there because optional packages are not activated in the live cd.

I first thought how we could manage to 'temporarily install' the optional packages in such a live-cd/usb situation. But I guess that's not easily done.

...if no changes to the userguide files were made, no new userguide packages should be built.

Very much agreed. Same for other packages, like haiku_loader and makefile_engine. They, too get updated all the time. Fortunately, they're very small...

[bitigchi]

I've experienced loading screen glitches (duplicate lamps on top of Haiku text) while installing a compiled Haiku package without installing haiku_loader. Probably it's best if it's updated as well until a complete solution is implemented I guess.

[pulkomandy]

That is completely unrelated. It happens only when you use different settings for the "compatibility" mode, because depending on this, the Haiku logo is shown or not on the splash screen, and the icons are shifted accordingly. If you mismatch a loder with the logo and a kernel without (or conversely), things don't line up. It's not an issue for the official repos which always have the logo. We could improve on this, but it's an unrelated problem.

I first thought how we could manage to 'temporarily install' the optional packages in such a live-cd/usb situation. But I guess that's not easily done.

Well it depends what we want to do with the optional packages. Currently we use them as a way to disable the development stuff on the live image to save memory and allow running Installer on low memory systems. We can make something more complex, but it creates other issues:

• What gets in the list? All packages or only some?
• Do we need to handle dependencies in Installer to make sure you don't remove a thing and try to install another thing that depends on it?

[pulkomandy]

The userguide package was moved out of the Haiku git repository which means it will not be updated at every update of Haiku now. So that's already one part of the problem solved.

The other part is having Installer automatically unselect some packages on installation. The idea is to have a situation where:

• On the release media, all versions of the userguide are available and activated (so they are in /system/packages)
• Installer automatically skips them when installing, except the one corresponding to the currently active languages, or english if none of the active languages already have an userguide translation
• Should the other packages still be mentionned in Installer "optional packages" list? This would make it clear what's happening and make it possible to add more languages, or remove all languages if wanted (we could consider offering a "minimal" option in Installer removing some other things too).

The third item is probably the one that requires more work, the first two shouldn't be too hard to do.

[humdinger]

Should the other packages still be mentionned in Installer "optional packages" list?

Yes, definitely.