Just as the new week begins, I started thinking about what types of tools BootZilla should offer in the long term. Should BootZilla offer tools to get rid of the “Get Windows Ten” feature? Should BootZilla offer tools to maintain a system, or should it be the one-time fix toolkit that techs pull out from their pockets and use to remove all the crap that ends up on random people’s machines?
Should BootZilla act as a multi-purpose tool set, instead of the current toolkit that it exists as? As it stands, BZ is just the toolkit that a tech pulls out from their pockets, as a solution to a problem that they’re having problems solving. I’m not sure whether or not BootZilla is ready for this migratory period either.
During development of the BZBuilder, I did add a bit of ‘add-ons’ functionality, which I intended to use as a means of introducing new functionality to the toolkit. At this point in time, I’m considering adding a pre-packaged toolkit add-on that would include the tools mentioned above. This way, the toolkit would feel complete, and would allow the end-user to customize it if they don’t want the added tools. The total added size to the toolkit should not exceed 100mb. The plan for addons was to not require more than 100mb/addon script.
One of the other benefits of adding Easy2Boot to the toolkit was to make it easy to add pre-packaged ISO files to the toolkit without adding a lot of bloat to the toolkit – being able to package a whole bunch of bootable tools to a single piece of boot media is a huge advancement, let alone being able to do it without much in the way of ‘special’ tools.
So here we are, the Winter of 2016, a solid year after the initial proof of concept for BootZilla v1. What comes next is the last bits and pieces of the entire toolkit, as intended from the very start.
The next release should include the aforementioned pre-packaged add-on tools, and should also include the (currently missing) configuration for syMenu.
I’m not setting a soft or hard date, as it will happen when it happens. Work comes first, after all, and I have quite a bit of it to get through before I have a chance at doing more work on BZ. At the earliest, I’d expect the next version to be available between March-May 2016. The final version may have to wait until Summer 2016.
The eventual v2 release will be postponed for at least 6-months to a year from the release of the final version of v1.