David Weinehall wrote:
I've been pondering about a "apt-remote" tool for a while, that would perform the update semi-remotely; you keep /var/lib/dpkg/{status,info} on the target, but the rest of the infrastructure only exists on the source computer, which does the upgrade calculations, downloads the packages, builds the package tree etc, then installs the package contents on the the target, the target runs the install scripts and gets the status file updated (possibly remotely) after the install is finished.
It would be a neat trick, but I'm finding that the hard part for me in using debs is keeping my own source code changes integrated. Also, there is a lot of overhead building stuff that I just don't care about.
In other words, it seems like a good way of making "a smaller Debian", but not quite for smaller, more heavily modified embedded systems.
openembedded is definitely worth a look for one way of doing things. I think they get a lot of stuff right, but the whole thing seems to be weighed down under lots of "magic" variables and files.
-- David N. Welton davidw@eidetix.com