Bug#982244: debian-installer: please stop using genisoimage
Hi,
i'm the upstream developer of xorriso.
There are no plans to support HFS in xorriso. The project has a HFS+
add-on contributed by Vladimir Serbinenko (of GRUB). One may test it by
a run of grub-mkrescue when grub-efi-amd is installed.
Dunno whether this helps in any way with the powerpc architecture.
As an alternative to HFS in xorriso (i.e. in libisofs) i would propose
the method which Matthew Garrett used to bring HFS+ into Fedora ISOs
in 2012. He created a small HFS+ filesystem image with enough content
to bring execution to the files of the ISO 9660 filesystem, similar to
what the EFI system partition image does in Debian amd64 ISOs.
This HFS+ image was then brought into the ISO as El Torito boot image
and marked it in a GPT and an Apple Partition Map as partition.
See https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/11285.html .
xorriso can do this stunt. debian-13.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso even has a
remnant from the Fedora layout by marking its EFI boot image not only
in MBR and GPT but also in an Apple Map. (What's missing is the HFS+
image which was the original reason for the Apple Map.)
One could try with a HFS image and see how far the boot process gets.
The decisive xorrisofs option is -isohybrid-apm-hfsplus .
See https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=package%3Adebian-cd+apm-hfsplus
Said this, i wonder why cdrkit should be forced out of Debian.
genisoimage still is in charge of producing ISO 9660 / UDF hybrids for
video or for operating systems which cannot read large files from
ISO 9660 filesystems.
wodim is still in charge of producing exotic CD sector layouts, like
-raw96r, -raw96p, -raw16, -xa1, -xa2, -xamix.
Ok, https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cdrkit shows 132 bugs, the oldest
being 18 years old. But if wodim users refrain from burning DVD or BD
media and genisoimage users refrain from using exotic long file names
then cdrkit is still usable for its classic purposes.
After all genisoimage still works for producing Debian powerpc ISOs.
If there show up mission critical bugs in genisoimage, then i would be
willing to help with diagnosing and developing remedies.
(But i am not willing to learn about cmake in order to fix the newest
bug:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1112771
"cdrkit: FTBFS with CMake 4"
pointing to:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2025/04/msg00310.html
which looks like Debian maintainer's work for which i'm not qualified
anayways.)
If Debian ditches cdrkit, i expect that cdrtools zombies will become
more popular among Debian users.
Have a nice day :)
Thomas
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