Design of new debian-cd

[Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>]

Hello everybody,

I took a few notes yesterday everning about how I would see the build of
an image with a rewrite of debian-cd ... it's in the text file attached.

Comments are welcome (as well as patch if you feel the need to extend
what I wrote) !

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog -+- http://www.ouaza.com
Formation Linux et logiciel libre : http://www.logidee.com
Earn money with free software: http://www.geniustrader.org

DESIGN OF A NEW DEBIAN-CD

Process of building a set of ISO
--------------------------------

1. Setup a build directory
 
   This temp tree will be self-hosting. It will contain everything
   related to that CD set and its build for one arch :
   - the configuration selected (having it only in environment variables
     is not good, it causes confusion and is a risk of having an old
     config conflict with the new one currently used if all variables are
     not reset)
   - the list of packages to include (still generated from profile like it
     is now)
   - temporary tree(s) where we drop everything that needs to be put on
     the image
   - resulting ISO images or jigdo files
   - temporary tree for apt
   - cache file for things downloaded from the net ?
   - scripts used to generate
   
2. Configure the parameters of the build

   - Select a "media type"
     This will induce a default media size and will have consequences on
     other scripts concerning how much data can be included on the image.
   - Select a "package profile" (i.e. an actual task)
   - Select a "debian-installer profile"
   - Select a "build profile"
     This could copy all the required scripts in the build directory.
     (maybe the "media type" info could be integrated into the
      "build profile", in any case build profiles would vary with
      releases ...)
   
   - Customize any other standard configuration item (cf CONF.sh)
   
   - Add additionnal sources of package (used to be "local packages")

3. Setup an APT sub-directory to be able to download packages and to
   make calculations with the information contained in
   "apt-cache dumpavailable"

Loop until packages are available (

 4. Add "fixed" content to the CD #1 (documentation, tools, boot files, ...).
 
 5. Create the list of packages that goes for CD #1 (with an accurate
    calculation since we already have all the content of the image
    except md5sum.txt and the Packages files, and size of both of them
    can be easily estimated).
 
 6. Generate Packages.gz file for CD #1 (ideally without having to add the
    packages into the temp tree).
 
)

And then :

7a. Either add packages and generate .iso

7b. Or directly generate jigdo files.