Bug#1124082: debian-installer: please rename mini.iso to e.g.debian-13.2.0-amd64-mini.iso
la 27.12.2025 klo 23.57 Cyril Brulebois (kibi@debian.org) kirjoitti:
>
> Control: tag -1 wontfix
>
> Martin-Éric Racine <martin-eric.racine@iki.fi> (2025-12-27):
> > While d-i images mostly follow a consistent naming scheme, there are
> > two notable exceptions: the mini netboot ISO and hd-media:
> >
> > mini.iso
> > boot.img.gz
>
> I see how versioning them might make it easier for (presumably expert)
> users to keep track of their downloads, but I don't think we would want
> to give those files a more “official-looking” status…
It indeed is about making it easier to keep track of downloads.
Currently, I have to download the mini ISO, mount it, then cat
.disk/info to know what to rename it to. It also means that I have to
do this for every architecture I download, instead of just downloading
a bunch of files and letting the filename tell me which distribution
and architecture is the target.
> > It would be desirable for these to follow the naming convention used
> > for other images:
> >
> > debian-13.2.0-amd64-mini.iso
> > debian-13.2.0-amd64-boot.img.gz
>
> Additionally they aren't produced in lockstep with debian-cd, who
> consumes the state of a mirror at a given point and massages it into
> images based on its configuration.
Not produced in lockstep might indeed be an issue. Still, I don't see
why the scripts used to generate these couldn't include the version
the image was built from in the filename.
Personally, I prefer using mini-ISO over the full netinst-ISO because
it's a much smaller file to flash. It also ensures that whatever is
used for the install or rescue is the latest version found on the
Debian repository. With the full netinst image, we first use as many
deb/udeb as we can from the ISO, then later upgrade to what is on the
repository, which feels like an unnecessary step. IMHO, the full
netinst-ISO made sense back in the days when a minimal installation
without network access was a common case. Nowadays, installing without
any network access is rather unusual.
> We couldn't guarantee a 1:1 mapping between what happens when
> src:debian-installer is built and what happens later when debian-cd
> runs: maybe the latest d-i artifacts will need to be replaced by
> something else, maybe the version numbers won't match for some reason
> (e.g. what happens if we need to respin images, leading to x.y.1
> versions?), etc.
Noted.
This is a mere wishlist bug anyhow, because descriptive filenames
generally are a good idea since they simplify people's life. Team d-i
is of course welcome to consider this as non-essential for files that
fall outside the scope of cdimage.d.o mirrors, which is the case for
mini-ISO and HD-media.
Alternately, merely using filenames without the minor release digit
would already be a significant improvement:
debian-13-amd64-mini.iso
debian-13-amd64-boot.img.gz
Even this minimal implementation would already be better than the
current situation. Would you consider this option as a doable
compromise?
Cheers!
Martin-Éric
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