Re: Emdebian iso problem

[shawn <shawnlandden@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 2012-03-21 at 20:59 +0000, Neil Williams wrote: 
> On Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:35:16 -0700
> shawn <shawnlandden@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > A less involved to way to get sort of half way between debian proper and
> > emdebian is to exlude some files with dpkg's path-include and
> > path-exclude features.
> 
> You've missed the point about kernels. Emdebian Grip removes all the
> files you mention at the repository level. Kernel packages do NOT
> contain large amounts of such files - the files in kernel packages are
> unnecessary for Emdebian because they are functionally unwarranted on
> that specific board. These are compiled modules for this particular
> kernel, using a kernel configuration where, as is normal in Debian,
> everything that works is fully enabled. There's no point downloading
> 100Mb of a Debian kernel package to throw away 95Mb and you can't do
> exclusion inside Debian Installer anyway.
> 
> > path-exclude=/usr/share/doc/*
> > path-include=/usr/share/doc/*/copyright*
> > 
> > as change-log files can be very big.
> 
> Not for kernel packages which is the entire point about the ISO
> problems. Those files account for 0.1% of a kernel package.
> 
> NOTE: It is not wise to exclude all copyright files, this is why
> Emdebian compresses copyright files but does remove changelog files.
it says "path-**include**" for a reason, its an exception to the rule,
and the * makes it also includes emdebian's copyright.gz files 
> 
> Dpkg exclusion filters are NOT useful for embedded, I've explained this
> before. The reason is that ALL the exclusion processing has to be done
> on the embedded device which is just where you don't have the space
> (you have to download the bloated package, unpack it alongside the
> bloated package and then move some files into useful locations and
> finally remove the rest but you don't delete the bloated package
> unless it is done manually later), you don't have the processing power
> and you don't have the ability to make the same changes on hundreds of
> installations at the same time.
> 
> Using exclusions on a kernel package just means that a 30Mb package
> unpacks to 100Mb of which you want 10Mb, so you waste time downloading
> and processing 120Mb.
> 
Yes yes I agree, this is only half-ass. I largely meant it so someone
that is having trouble with emdebian as was alluded to in earlier
emails.

excludes can be good for, (e.g.) virtual machines. , or for packages
which are not gripped and you are too lazy to grip yourself. (I've had
very bad luck with the apt-grip, and have only succeeded with emgrip,
which can be tedious)

Shawn