Proposal for building and nameing image options

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Hi,

this has been discussed a few times but we still have only the TYPE=
mechanism and some chaos. I propose to remove the TYPE= mechanism and
replace it with the following:

>From the discussions I see that we have 3 parameters defining the
image to be build:

1. boot method
   - floppy (floppy-usb, cdrom-boot-floppy via SBM, special usb-cdrom
             boot floppy?)
   - cdrom
   - netboot (pxe, tftp)
   - foreign OS (linux.bat under dos, amiboot under AmigaOS, yaboot
     under MacOS, ...)

2. medium for udebs
   - floppy (?)
   - net
   - cdrom / harddisk / partition
   - loopback file (on cdrom / harddisk / partition)

3. amount of debs on the cdrom
   - none
   - base (+a few)
   - all

I propose the following scheme:

1. The "boot method" defines what kind of image we have to build
   (togther with the arch). I suggest we use "BOOT=xxx" for that.

   I also suggest we add 2.88 MB floppy support to be used for the
   cdrom bootimage. "BOOT=CDROM" would depend on "BOOT=floppy
   FLOPPY_SIZE=2880". That should be just renaming some targets since
   we already build such an image for TYPE=cdrom

   Floppy would be 1.44 MB (or 2.88 for cdrom boot) images dd'able to floppies.
   Cdrom would be an iso9660 image (or hybrid for MAC).
   Net would be a tftpimage.
   Foreign would be a .tar.gz archive containing the bootloader,
   kernel, initrd, startscript, icons/pif files.

2. The "medium for udebs" defines the first retriever to be used and
   the size of the image. I suggest "UDEBS=xxx" for that.

   Floppy support for udebs is probably useless given the number of
   floppies needed. A subset of udebs to get networking running, like
   ppp, pppoe or isdn might be feasbale though.

   Net would be like the "make cd_image TYPE=netboot" at the moment. A
   real minimal CD just for booting and everything else from net.

   The last two can probably be merged into one case since they only
   differ in how to detect the udebs. Its eigther directly on the FS
   or the iso images is a file on the FS. This would be like the
   businesscard CDs.

   Default for UDEBS should $(BOOT).

3. The "amount of debs on the cdrom" is only valid for "UDEBS=cdrom".
   I suggest "DEBS=xxx" for this.

   Choosing DEBS=base on top of UDEBS=cdrom would add all base debs
   to the cdrom and stuff like isdn and pppoe as long as we have no
   udebs for that.

   Choosing DEBS=all would build a full cdrom set.

   The default for DEBS should be none.


For the cd images debian-cd can be configured or patched to support such
an image and I think its wise to use it. Its practically a must for
DEBS=all type cdroms.

As for packaging and autobuilding images thats another questions and
should be discussed in a different thread. Please keep that out of
this thread unless its relevant.

What do you think?

MfG
        Goswin