Packaging debian-installer images for upload and to where?
Hi,
debian-installer has two problems that need a decision soon:
1. Where will debian-installer images be placed?
We have floppy, cdrom, netboot and hd-install images ranging from
1.4 MB floppies, 5-20MB netboot/hd-install images and 5/20/50MB
cdrom isos. Total 100-150 MB per arch.
Images should be build regulary or even daily and stored for a few
days to allow for testing and savekeeping of tested and working
images.
Would ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/sid/main/disks-<arch>/ be
reasonable? Or should they be put on cdimage.debian.org (even the
floppy, net and hd images)?
2. How do we package up the images for upload?
Debian installer has to few developers with to few architectures to
manually compile and upload images for every arch. During the
Debian-installer Debcamp in Oldenburg we discussed using the
autobuilders to build the images. We would create a source package and
upload that. The autobuilder pick it up along with normal sources and
build it.
Now the problem begins:
- The build needs to download udebs. Currently that means access to
any rsync mirror (ftp or any apt/sources.list could be aranged). This
should be easy to arrange. We just try and contact the buildd
maintainer if it fails.
- The build produces some floppy images, some cdrom.iso, some tftp
images and some tar.gz archives. What to do with them.
It has been suggested to build debs or udebs containing these files
but thats an ugly solution. I would be nice if the files could be
added as such to the changes file, uploaded in the normal queue and
put into dists/sid/main/disks-<arch>/<date>/ by the ftp scripts.
E.g: (only important entries of the changes file)
Architecture: i386
Version: 20031018
Maintainer: Debian Install System Team <debian-boot@lists.debian.org>
Files:
bd065541fe35d5af69a016352a8c84b6 3334144 disks-i386 standard cdrom-boot.iso
90f048938e12e5f3c6d10344b07db63b 1474560 disks-i386 standard floppy-boot.img
Currently pretty much all the porting to different architectures is at
a standstill because the people with the hardware have no clue how to
build images and the people with the knowledge to build and fix bugs
have no hardware. I and some others feel that use of the autobuilders
to compile and build images is essential to getting porting underway
again even if they throw the build images away instead of uploading
them.
Objections, comments, suggestions?
MfG
Goswin
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