Christian Schulte <cs@schulte.it> wrote:
> There shouldn't be "a whole world of issues" and I'd rather ask about
> what issues the user ran into. What issues are those? I mean, running
> pkg_add to add a package depending on something not installed will
> produce corresponding error messages and not leave the system in a
> "whole world of issues" state.

Sure, but 100% of the time when someone writes in saying "I didn't
install xbase/comp/games and X doesn't work" the only viable advice is
"install all the sets". It is a common newbie footgun to install fewer
than all of the sets, in no small part (I imagine) because the installer
invites you to select sets. If you just keep hitting enter, you will of
course get all the sets, but given that you are prompted to think about
it, and even given an example command to enter if you want to deselct
all the X sets, it's not surprising that many people think "ah, I guess
this is good to do" when configuring a server installation.

Outside of people with extraordinary disk space constraints who are
willing to solve all of their own resulting problems, everyone should be
installing all the sets. Every time someone really starts insisting that
something should _work_ without X/comp/games, or that sysupgrade
shouldn't install all the sets, Theo threatens to merge all the sets
into one set and have done.

I've contemplated how install.sub could change to make it more likely
that well-meaning new admins will install all the sets. Something like
instead of always prompting you to select sets, add a prompt like
`ask_yn "Install complete base system?" yes` and not present the
selection UI to people who are just hitting enter. Anyone who types "no"
can get the set selection prompt with a warning that any customized
configuration is not tested or supported by the developers. I've never
sent a patch for this b/c I haven't ever had the gumption to give myself
a good way of testing changes to install.sub.