Re: m68k boot-floppies

[Daniel Jacobowitz <dan@debian.org>]

On Mon, Mar 20, 2000 at 07:52:44PM +0100, Michael Schmitz wrote:
> > > boot-floppies can't be built on kullervo because it absolutely requires
> > > root access, right? 
> > It requires root access (at least it did at home), but this does not mean it
> > can not be built on kullervo. All packages being built, are built using
> > sudo, which gives you root access. It just requires somebody who has the
> > time, gaining root access is just an administrative (minor) problem, I would
> > say. 
> 
> At least. For your home machine, you can give yourself root or sudo
> privileges all you like. For a remote machine, I'd be very cautious.
> Part of the build doesn't require root access anyway. But that's a gripe
> I have anyway with Debian builds: it's all or none, from make clean to 
> make binary. It would be tremendously helpful to have a separate hook from
> dpkg-buildpackage to just package the whole stuff (starting with make
> install) and another one to run without make clean, and stop short of make
> install. 

There is.  Look at dpkg-buildpackage's -r option; only binary and clean
are run with priviledge.  The boot floppies are an exception because of
their more particular requirements.

> Perhaps. But that's a bit beside the point - the tarball itself needs to
> be maintained some way or other (i.e. the Amiga booter scripts, the
> install guides, the Mac booter apps and stuff). The whole freaking build
> of the Mac install kit as StuffIt archive can't be automated at all before
> someone writes a StuffIt packer for Linux. The whole generation of the
> .map files and install scripts for the CD and the FTP archive isn't
> automated. Maybe the powerpc port comes up with a good way to do that,
> they seem to have the same problem with entirely different subarchs. 
> 
> In a nutshell, this sucks.

Yes, yes it does.  We're avoiding the problem, mostly.  We don't build
a .sit archive; there is plenty of macbinary support for the files we
need, and the rest are available as the .sit we want right off the
author's (usually Ben H's) web site.  Etc.

Dan

/--------------------------------\  /--------------------------------\
|       Daniel Jacobowitz        |__|        SCS Class of 2002       |
|   Debian GNU/Linux Developer    __    Carnegie Mellon University   |
|         dan@debian.org         |  |       dmj+@andrew.cmu.edu      |
\--------------------------------/  \--------------------------------/