• Contact: tech-pkg
• Mentors: Thomas Klausner
• Duration estimate: 3 months

IMPORTANT: This project was completed by various NetBSD developers. You may still contact the people above for details, but please do not submit an application for this project.

sysinst, the NetBSD installation tool, should be able to get NetBSD set up with most packages relevant to the end user during the installation step, to make it possible to get a usable system during the initial setup. The packages might be simple packages like screen or bigger ones like firefox. Configuration of the packages is not required to happen in sysinst.

A short overview of the milestones involved:

• Improve sysinst so it can list a pkgsummary.gz file on the install media and offer to install a subset of them. There should be a chooser included in sysinst where the user can select the packages they want to install.

• There should be some pre-defined sets included with sysinst that define the necessary packages for a Gnome or KDE desktop, so the user just chooses them (possibly just by adding appropriate meta packages to pkgsrc).

• Support fetching a pkgsummary file from a remote host (usually ftp.NetBSD.org with useful default PATH for architecture/release, but overridable) and offer installations of packages from there as well.

For bonus points (just as last step when the rest works): * Come up with lists of packages for amd64 to fill a CD or DVD (including the NetBSD base system)