Agama 10 blog post (#17)

* Agama 10 blog post

blog/2024-10-30-agama-10.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,199 @@
+---
+date: 2024-10-30 10:00:00 +00:00
+title: Releasing version 10
+description: Summary of the Agama 10 release
+tags:
+  - release
+---
+
+As you can see we have a new place for our Agama blog! So let's start with announcing the Agama
+version 10 release at this new place! :tada:
+
+{/* truncate */}
+
+We released the Agama version 10 quite some time ago, but we did not announce it yet because of lack
+of time. So if you downloaded the Agama installer recently then you are already using this new
+version.
+
+We decided to separate the Agama blog posts from the YaST blog as those tools are quite different
+and to avoid confusion about what is what in the future. So welcome at the new blogging place for
+Agama!
+
+## QR codes with Agama URL {#qr}
+
+Let's start with some cool and fancy stuff! :smiley:
+
+We found out that it is possible to display QR code even on a Linux text console. As QR codes can
+contain an URL then why not use it also for Agama? If you use a mobile phone for connecting to the
+running Agama instance this makes the process much easier.
+
+![Linux console with Agama QR code](../static/img/blog/2024-10-30/qr-code.png)
+
+The QR code is not displayed on standard 80x25 or 80x24 terminals because there is not enough space,
+it is displayed only on bigger screens.
+
+## Syntax highlighting {#highlighting}
+
+You can edit the current Agama configuration in a text editor using the `agama config edit` command.
+This opens a text editor (Vim by default) with the current Agama configuration in the JSON format.
+
+Previously the configuration was displayed as a plain text file without any syntax highlighting. Now
+you can enjoy JSON syntax highlighting which makes editing a bit more pleasant.
+
+import SmallImageBox from "@site/src/components/SmallImageBox";
+
+<SmallImageBox>
+  ![Editor without syntax highlighting](../static/img/blog/2024-10-30/config-edit-before.png)
+  ![Editor with syntax highlighting](../static/img/blog/2024-10-30/config-edit-after.png)
+</SmallImageBox>
+
+You can use any another text editor for editing the configuration but as the Live ISO content is
+limited it only offers Joe as an alternative.
+
+```bash
+EDITOR=joe agama config edit
+```
+
+:::tip
+
+You can install more editors using the usual `zypper install` command. But be careful, see the
+<a href="#free-space-warning">warning</a> below.
+
+:::
+
+## Product selection {#products}
+
+We changed a bit the list of products which can be installed with Agama. Since version 10 it is
+possible to install openSUSE Leap 16.0 Alpha. We also created a SLES 16 flavor but for now it is not
+available for public.
+
+The product selection dialog now contains the product icons so the product selection should be more
+intuitive. Many thanks to [Luboš Kocman](https://github.com/lkocman) for implementing this!
+
+![Product selection](../static/img/blog/2024-10-30/product-selection.png)
+
+## Improvements in storage {#storage}
+
+Agama now supports creating LVM volume groups, logical volumes, thin pools and thin logical volumes
+in automatic installations. Reusing volume groups or logical volumes is not supported yet.
+
+Also the existing partitions can be deleted automatically. There are two options, unconditional
+delete and delete only if needed. The first option always deletes the specified partition, the
+second option deletes it only when there is not enough space to create the needed partitions.
+
+Always delete a partition:
+
+```json
+{
+  "search": "/dev/vda1",
+  "delete": true
+}
+```
+
+Delete a partition only when needed:
+
+```json
+{
+  "search": "/dev/vda1",
+  "deleteIfNeeded": true
+}
+```
+
+See more details in the [auto_storage](
+https://github.com/openSUSE/agama/blob/master/doc/auto_storage.md) documentation.
+
+## Installation repository URL {#installation-url}
+
+By default Agama installs the packages from the repositories specified in the product configuration.
+Those normally point to the official SUSE/openSUSE installation repositories.
+
+But for testing purposes, especially in the openQA tests, you might need to install the packages
+from some testing or staging repository to test the latest versions which are not published in those
+official repositories yet.
+
+From now Agama supports using the `agama.install_url` boot parameter for overriding the default
+installation repositories. You can use multiple URLs separated by comma:
+
+```bash
+agama.install_url=https://example.com/1,https://example.com/2
+```
+
+## Internal changes {#internal}
+
+There are lots of internal changes in Agama so we mention here only the most important ones.
+
+### Typescript support {#typescript}
+
+The Agama web UI started in plain Javascript. But that is quite fragile, you can easily by mistake
+pass wrong arguments to a function or call a missing method on an object. Such a mistake would cause
+a crash. The [Typescript](https://www.typescriptlang.org/) language avoids all these kinds of
+problems.
+
+Recently we added support for writing parts of the web UI in Typescript. We do not plan to do any
+big refactoring at once, the files will be gradually switched from Javascript to Typescript when
+touching them.
+
+### TanStack Query state management {#state-management}
+
+In the web frontend we started using the [TanStack Query](https://tanstack.com/query/latest)
+framework for the state management. It provides a mechanism based on promises to fetch or update the
+state automatically. It takes care of caching, re-fetching, error handling, etc. so you do not have
+to implement these features by yourselves.
+
+### Live ISO free space {#free-space}
+
+In Agama 9 we [fixed locking](2024-06-28-agama-9.mdx#live-iso) the package management system so now
+you can easily install additional packages into the Live ISO system. But it turned out that the
+available space for installing new packages was just about 0.5GB. That was not much if you wanted to
+install some big debugging packages or use your own compiled Agama HTTP server (the Rust binaries
+with debug information can be huge).
+
+<a id="free-space-warning"></a>
+In Agama 10 we increased the available space to about 3.5GB which should be enough in most cases.
+
+:::warning
+
+Because the Live ISO system runs in a RAM disk then any changes to the file system, like installing
+packages or editing the files, will take the RAM space. Make sure your system has enough RAM for
+storing the new or updated files otherwise the Agama installer might crash later!
+
+:::
+
+Technically it was a bit tricky because when building the ISO image Kiwi computes the file system
+size automatically and does not allow to set a custom value. As a workaround we create a big [sparse
+file](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_file) during the image build which just takes a tiny
+fraction of its real size so the final ISO size is basically the same. To free even some more space
+the file is automatically deleted when booting the Live ISO.
+
+### Puppeteer {#puppeteer}
+
+For writing the integration tests we originally used the [Playwright](https://playwright.dev/)
+framework. It works nice, it has great features, but there is one major problem for us: it does not
+work with original unmodified Firefox browser. For running the tests it downloads a specially
+patched Firefox binary. That means we cannot use it for testing Agama because we need to test it
+with the Firefox version we have in our distribution.
+
+Unfortunately the Chromium browser which works fine unmodified cannot be compiled on S390 and
+PowerPC architectures. That means we would not be able to test Agama in SUSE Linux Enterprise on
+these architectures.
+
+That is why we replaced Playwright with the [Puppeteer](https://pptr.dev/) framework in Agama 10.
+
+### HTTP backend in CLI {#http-cli}
+
+When moving to the new HTTP-based architecture without Cockpit we took some shortcuts. One of them
+was not using HTTP clients in the command-line interface (CLI) but using the old DBus API.
+
+This was fixed in Agama 10 so now also the command-line now uses the same HTTP API as the web
+frontend. This should avoid possible inconsistencies between those two user interfaces.
+
+## Conclusion {#conclusion}
+
+Your contributions and opinions are important sources for feedback about the new release. So don't
+hesitate to contact the YaST team at the [YaST Development mailing
+list](https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/yast-devel@lists.opensuse.org/), our `#yast` channel
+at [Libera.chat](https://libera.chat/) or the [Agama project at
+GitHub](https://github.com/agama-project/agama) if you find any problem or have an idea for
+improvement.
+
+Have a lot of fun!