jigdo rawtemplate support

[Richard Atterer <richard@list03.atterer.net>]

On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 11:39:35AM +0000, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 01:25:15PM +0100, Richard Atterer wrote:
> >".rawtemplate" support:
> >
> >  It is possible to make .jigdo creation for Debian CDs much faster
> >  by hacking mkisofs to support more direct output of .jigdo/.template
> >  files:
> 
> OK, I now have something approximating this.

Cool! Unfortunately, I can't reach your site ATM, will try again later.

> I've tested the code here fairly well over the weekend, and I'm quite
> happy with what I have - it works, and doesn't interfere at all with
> normal ISO image output. For now I'll only produce the template file if
> you also make an image; if you don't want the image, simply specify -o
> /dev/null to throw it away.
> 
> The internals of mkisofs are really very nice - it's well structured
> and clean in most places, and it was obvious how and where to make the
> first attempt at these changes.

I agree - I also had a look at it some time ago. :)

> They'll probably want cleaning up before upstream will accept, of course.
> 
> I've also written simple dirty tools to list the contents of one of
> these template files and a current jigdo file - see
> 
>    http://www.einval.com/~steve/sw/CD/dump.c     (jigdo template)
>    http://www.einval.com/~steve/sw/CD/dump-jte.c (helper template)
> 
> I've had a look at adding support for the new template helper file
> into jigdo itself, but I can't abide C++ at the best of times and the
> jigdo code is fairly opaque IMHO.

Um, oh. :-/ It's fairly *big* to begin with, but also quite well commented.

> One thing I'm curious about, Richard - why dod you decide to use (almost)
> base64-encoded md5sums in the jigdo files? All other software works with
> simple hexdumps of md5sums, and I'm not convinced doing things
> differently is a good idea...

I wanted to keep the size of the .jigdo files as small as possible, and 
since they contain quite a few md5sums, I chose a more efficient ASCII 
encoding than hexadecimal. It became obvious quickly that the .jigdo sizes 
are negligible compared to the .template sizes, but I had already written 
the base64 code then, so I didn't bother replacing it with code 
which outputs hexadecimal...

> Comments?

I'd love to see rawtemplate supported in jigdo-file. Unfortunately, I'm 
pretty busy, so it'd be nice if someone else wanted to try adding the code 
- anyone?

Cheers,

  Richard

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