Re: Slink not installable from CDs

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

> So, slink is more than 760 Megabytes big for i386 machines.  This
> does not fit on one single CD.  This means that even without contrib,
> non-free, non-US etc. we already need two cds.
> 
> This needs to be addressed quick!
> 
> Heiko Schlittermann has written a new dselect installation method
> that supports multiple cds.[1]  The reason why he hasn't uploaded
> it yet is that it depends on a hax0red version of dpkg-scanpackages
> to support a new field for each package "CD" which contains the
> CD on which the package is stored.
> 
> Phil, as debian-cd maintainer and maintainer of the OfficialCD, I'd
> like to hear your oppinion.

If there's a way of making multi CD installs work, then I'm all for it.

One thing:  Do people think it's important to keep the possibility of doing a 
one CD install, and still ending up with a useful system ?

If so, I would think the thing to do is to move the ``most optional'' packages 
from main onto the second CD, so that the first CD still contains the
``most important'' bits of main.

How do we determine what's important, and what's optional ?

Is something like ``Anything with a priority of extra gets put on the second 
CD'' a reasonable guess ?  or should we make a list of stuff to go on the 
second CD based on some sensible criteria (if anyone can think of some without 
starting a flame war ;-)

The second CD might then be main2 + contrib + X11-source, and the third could 
be the source, assuming that all fits (which it probably doesn't anymore)

Has anyone been making slink CDs BTW ?  If so, how big is it all ?

I clearly need to give this a go and see how big it all is...  I'll report 
back.

Cheers, Phil.