Google Summer of Code project started (Ubuntu)

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+Google Summer of Code project started (Ubuntu)
+
+<p>More on the <a href="http://code.google.com/soc/">Google Summer of
+Code</a>: as well as the
+<a href="http://riva.ucam.org/~cjwatson/blog/summerofcode/2006/2006-05-25-gsoc-d-i-hurd-started.html">
+project I'm mentoring for Debian</a>, I'm mentoring Evan Dandrea (no blog
+yet?), writing a <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MigrationAssistance">
+migration assistant</a> for Ubiquity.</p>
+
+<p>I haven't talked much about Ubiquity, mostly because I've been far too
+busy writing it. Ubuntu has needed an installer for its live CD for a while,
+partly because, well, loads of users want it, and partly because it will cut
+Canonical's costs quite a lot if we only have to send out half the number of
+CDs in shipit (apparently single-CD packaging is significantly cheaper than
+double-CD packaging). I'd been resisting doing something from scratch
+because I love d-i and I think it would be a really bad idea to end up
+maintaining two installer implementations from the ground up (live CDs are
+nice, but they don't cut it for everyone). So when I was given the task of
+doing a shiny live CD installer with a custom-designed UI, while I started
+with a more-or-less from-scratch implementation put together by <a
+href="http://www.guadalinex.org/">Guadalinex</a> (thanks!), I fairly quickly
+diverged from that and morphed it into something that uses d-i code for as
+much of the backend operation and logic as it sensibly can. I'd call it a
+sort of debconf frontend except that its design is almost opposite to how a
+debconf frontend should work, in that it's highly specialised to react to
+particular question names. This had a lot of advantages in terms of being
+fairly quick to write, although in the long term I think I might prefer
+something closer to cdebconf plugins for the job; we'll see how things turn
+out.</p>
+
+<p>Evan wanted to write an extension to this to automatically migrate
+settings and documents from an existing Windows installation, which I think
+would be an absolutely excellent thing to have: automatic migration is a
+real killer feature in an installer. In fact, d-i already has a start at
+this, namely os-prober, which in conjunction with some bootloader installer
+code magically sets up boot menu entries for other operating systems on your
+disk. So, I suggested to Evan that he might want to put most of the clever
+logic in a udeb, so that it can be used in d-i too, and to my relief he
+seemed quite enthused by the idea. He's starting on the preliminary work now
+and I look forward to seeing his progress.</p>
+
+<p>Best of luck, Evan!</p>