On May 2, 2005, at 9:30 PM, Joey Hess wrote:
Another approach entirely is to write a program that can take $RANDOM_DI_IMAGE, unpack it, add $RANDOM_UDEB, and repack it. We'd need to make the program available on the web or something for users w/o a debian system to run it on, though. And dealing with all image types of all architectures would be a lot of work. Of course, even though my main reason for wanting d-i to support something like this is because of non-free firmware, there would beother applications, including debugging, easier image customisation, andadding initrd-preseed files.
As a user, I greatly prefer this option. I understand that for the developers it's the most work, but as compensation it has by far the biggest payoff. It injects flexibility into a process that is currently very inflexible.
Currently there are a number of udebs that are on the install CD "just in case" they might be needed -- e.g. for debugging or for dealing with hardware that is a bit off the beaten track. With this proposed tool, they could all be removed from the default iso image, making it smaller and faster to download. If you need one or more of the optional udebs, you can add them. If you don't need them (the usual case) you can ignore them.
Rick