Re: [custom] Custom Debian Distros need the help from debian developers

[Free Ekanayaka <free@agnula.org>]

>>>>> "Andreas" == Andreas Tille <tillea@rki.de> writes:

    Andreas> On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, Benj. Mako Hill wrote:

    >> Basically,  I sympathizes with  Petter  in his frustration  and
    >> agree with Enrico in his evaluation of the problem and proposed
    >> plan of  action: the CDD folks among  us need to finish writing
    >> up some good

    Andreas> Please watch

    Andreas>     http://people.debian.org/~tille/debian-med/paper-cdd

    Andreas> closely for   daily  updates and  wish  me  spare time to
    Andreas> finish   this  work.  I's   be  happy  about orthographic
    Andreas> corretcions and corrections  and enhancements in terms of
    Andreas> contents ...

Andreas,  I've read again your paper  and I've just  noticed that your
are referencing #186085 (maybe the first time I was too tired, or it's
newly added).

Quoting Joe Hess:

> I have been holding off on  doing anything on  this bug because I am
> not  sure how tasksel should  relate to debian sub distributions. We
> added debian jr a while back, but it has  a wider possible user base
> than many sub distributions, and it makes sense you may want it on a
> machine that is also used for other tasks. It was also the first sub
> distro, and  so  a special case  at the  time, not something   I can
> generalize into a general policy for tasksel.

[...]

> There is also the concern that what's  in tasksel's tasks can impact
> what goes onto  the first CD,  although it doesn't   have to, and  I
> don't always keep this at  the top of my  mind when adding new stuff
> to tasksel tasks. Debian-Med encompasses  90+ mb of  debs, so I have
> to consider this.

Is  it critical for  Debian that all the  packages belonging to a task
fit on this first CD?  After all having to change  a CD-ROM during the
installation should not that big deal for a user, but I may be missing
something..

Considering now that DVD readers and  burners are becoming cheaper and
more popular, this issue might be partly solved in the near future. On
http://www.debian-cd.com/ they already produce woody/sarge DVDs.

> Might it not be better if for subdistributions we generated customized
> install cds for those distribututions? These could have everything
> needed for that specific purpose on the one cd, and would automatically
> install it. These CDs could be blessed by the debian project and created
> with the debian-cd package like our regular cds.

Would a general, CDD independent, framework for automatically creating
such ISO/DVD images make sense? For example  there might be scripts on
a server   which  take  care  of creating    and updating  such images
according to the dependences of  the task packages  of a given CDD, or
to some sort  of  rules defined inside  in  one of  its  task packages
(e.g. debian-med-cd).

Free