Ideas on #11364 "Provide a wizard-based project creation option"

Ideas on #11364 "Provide a wizard-based project creation option"

[Reyna, David]

Hi all,

I would like to start this discussion for 11364. 

I believe that the audience for this feature are users completely new to Yocto Project (and to Toaster itself). They need guidance for getting their first project up without already knowing the YP vocabulary and product features. It should be able to guide them to create the default Quick Start QEMU project that the YP document describes. It should also be able to create starter projects beyond that. The idea is to jump start their experience and help them get their first build accomplished.

Here is a very basic wire diagram idea of how the project creation wizard could look like.

  [Yocto] [Toaster]              [Documentation]  
  --------------------------------------------------------
  
  Project Wizard
  
  --------------------------------------------------------
                |                                       
  [>] Quick (?) |   Pre-set your default starter project:
      Project   |                                       
                |     |Default project settings |Select|
  [ ] Board (?) |                                       
      (MACHINE) |     |Minimal QEMU project     |Select| 
                |                                      
  [ ] Source (?)|     |Basic Graphics project   |Select| 
      (Distro)  |                                      
                |     |Basic LAMP project       |Select| 
  [ ] Content(?)|                                      
      (Layers)  |     |Basic Server project     |Select| 
                |      
  [ ] Output (?)|     ...
      (Deploy)  |                                       
                |                                       
  [ ] Extras (?)|    
                |                                       
  --------------------------------------------------------
                      [Back] [Next] [Finish]

My ideas are:

  1) I want to reuse as much of the Toaster design elements as possible. 

  2) Wizard categories are displayed on the left (similar to the normal project interface). The user can see their progress and also know where they are going. If we make these as links, then the user can click to skip to that category if that is the way they think, which also removes the need for a 'Skip' button. In my example, I have given the categories a high level concept name and then added the YP-centric name. I have also added help links to pop up the documentation for the respective items.

  3) At the bottom are the traditional 'Back', 'Next', and 'Finish' buttons. This would sit in a new bottom frame.

  4) The middle right would be the category selection pages, similar to how the normal selection pages are placed and work.

  5) I suggest that the first category is a set of standard default configurations, just to given them a way to jump start the process. They could select one, set the machine, and then run with that for their first pass. We can poll the community to see what set of predefines would be useful for first time users.

  6) For the Board and Distro, we can simply bring out the respective selection part from the normal page, which is (a) the current value, (b) the way to edit it in-line, plus (c) way to bring up the full selection page. We could also supplement the page with in-line help text.

   Machine
   -------
   Machine suggestions come from the list of layers added 
   to your project. If you don't see the machine you are looking for, 
   check the full list of machines
   
   [ qemux86 ] [EDIT]
   [View compatible machines]

  7) For 'Content', we could first (a) show the list of current layers, and (b) have a button to add additional recipes, and when added return to showing (a).

  8) For Output we could show the various IMAGE_FSTYPES that we currently offer in the "Bitbake Variables" page. 

  9) Extras would be a catch all page for anything else. I do not have any candidate selections for this page yet.

 10) When "Finish" is clicked, the user is taken to the normal Project Configuration page with all their selections filled in. I was thinking of adding a link that could take the user back to the wizard so that both project setup systems were always available (without one-way streets).

 11) Also, we could offer a page in the wizard for the regular/recommended Image Recipes, so that they could directly do their first build as the last step in the wizard.

What do you think?

- David