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Re: Embedded != Low Power



On Fri, 2008-10-31 at 23:03 +0100, Michelle Konzack wrote:
> > Cross-building is not part of Grip. Cross-building is initially related
> > only to Emdebian Crush using functionality changes for dependency
> > reduction. Cross-building may be a bonus from work on Crush but Grip is
> > essentially about repackaging prebuilt native binaries. Packages can be
> > "gripped" during the build, prior to inclusion into a Grip repository or
> > after downloading onto the device running Grip (if sufficient space
> > exists).
> 
> Is it no enough, if I download the package, use dpkg to unpack it,  then
> strip it and use dpkg-repack to have the small striped package?

Yes, you can do the stripping manually but I think you'll tire of the
process before you get to 10,000 packages - let alone keeping those
updated. :-)

emgrip uses dpkg -x and dpkg -e, removes files, compresses the copyright
file and (will) handle the TDeb so that Emdebian Grip still has some
localisation support. (You don't want to throw away /usr/share/locale/
entirely and you can't just assume that all users want de or fr so the
Emdebian TDeb mechanism needs to be available where each locale has
their own TDeb for each source package.)

> > Packages can be gripped on any architecture, for any architecture. It
> > doesn't matter if you want to Grip powerpc packages on amd64, just as
> > long as the full sized powerpc binaries exist - in most cases, exist in
> > a Debian mirror somewhere. emgrip is based on dpkg-cross without the
> > -cross stuff so it can work anywhere (hence the limited dependencies)
> > and churn out any package for any architecture whilst working on any
> > architecture. There is no compilation involved.
> > 
> > Emdebian Grip aims to provide a natively-built Debian Installation for
> > any architecture supported by Debian in a way that is functionally
> > identical to Debian, just smaller and using TDebs in the Emdebian manner
> > for extra granularity. However, if Grip does get to 10,000 packages,
> > using Emdebian TDebs would turn that into more like 150,000 which may
> > well be a decision that has to be faced at some point.
> 
> Wow!

I'm currently working on the "feeder" code that will identify which
packages you need (code based on debootstrap but extended for arbitrary
package sets), calculate a unique list of source packages for that list,
get the packages, grip them and put them somewhere sensible for
inclusion into a repository. Once that code is working, it will be
simply a matter of starting the script and waiting for your Emdebian
Grip repository to appear (or for your machine to run out of disc
space!)

The problem is going to be getting hold of the .changes files because
Debian treats them very casually. There are records of the .changes file
in the PTS but it isn't trivial that way. Without the .changes, the code
will need a little help to relate the .dsc to the right .deb files,
possibly it'll need to scan debian/control, recreate debian/files and
regenerate the .changes file. Not sure if that would even work at this
stage.

.changes files are necessary because the repository needs to have the
source packages and the gripped .debs.

Of course, if you aren't going to distribute the repository, then you
can just grip the .debs wherever you can find them.

It might also be possible to download the relevant source files from the
Debian mirrors *after* including the gripped .debs.

> One of my older systems (~7 years) has a repository of any "binarys" and
> "libs" I could need and then if I had the need for a new binary, I used
> 
>     ldd <binary>
> 
> to know, which dependencies I must resolv... and copy the  needed  files
> into my system.  THis leed to the real bare minimum  of  files  using  a
> STANDARD precompiled distribution.
> 
> Hey realy, it is working up to now...  Beginning with "Slink" and  going
> over "Potato" and "Woody" to "Sarge"...

It will be possible, in time. That's the advantage with Grip, it can
work with any .deb from any release - at least, as long as the current
dpkg can handle it.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/


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