On Fri, Apr 18, 2003 at 11:19:51PM +0100, Alastair McKinstry wrote:
> In order to get debian-installer built on all archs, I have created a
> package "build-installer" which creates the images.
You've created it, or are just thinking about it? If the former, URL?
> Note: I do _not_ propose that this _package_ ever enters the stable
> distribution; its a method to make the images for dists/..disks-* that
> will go into the archive in the normal way.
That's not a reason for the package not to enter stable. What if someone
with some source CDs wants to modify the installer? Why shouldn't they
be able to just use your package with their updated .udebs?
> The cleanest solution is to tag all relevant sources, wrap them up in a
> single tarball, and build that when we want to build the images.
>
> However we also want to rebuild frequently (on all archs), so we want to
> avoid a massive build process. One way is what is implemented in
> build-installer-0.0.001, download the udebs and build the image from
> those. Fast, but it involves downloading in the debian/rules; running
> the debuild does not give the same image every time; breaks lots of
> rules. But, if we intend to rebuild the image frequently (eg daily), its
> the lightest in terms of network load and processor time on the buildds.
> Call this solution (1)
That seems plausible, but won't necessary work on the buildds -- you
don't necessarily have network access, although you probably do. You
also don't generally have root.
> Better long-term is a method where a preconfigure step constructs all
> the sources into a tarball; the build-installer-XXX.orig.tar.gz;
> building this first builds all the udebsm then creates the images from
> them. Good semantics, builds the same image every time, no downloading
> during the build. But the tarball is 8-10 MB and build time may be
> significant. Call this solution (2)
Huh? All the sources of what? Every udeb? Including libc? That sounds
like a complete non-starter.
> This requires seperate autobuild process for d-i
Which would suck. If you need root, you have to do it, though.
Alternatively, you might be able to arrange to build the images for each
arch on a single box; this would not suck. Making bootable sparc images
on an i386 box (or vice-versa) might be tricky.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
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