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Package: wnpp Version: 2.3; issued 2013-08-28 Subject: RFP: xchroot -- extended chroot with X11/Xorg forwarding and aufs/unionfs support for read only roots Severity: wishlist * Package name : xchroot Version : 2.3 Upstream Author : Elmar Stellnberger <estellnb@elstel.org> * URL : http://www.elstel.org/xchroot * License : QPL-like; see for the program header or run the program with --license Description : xchroot is a little convenience bash script that will allow you to run X-based programs in your chroot environment. You may also chroot to a new environment without touching any of its files either by using aufs and unionfs. You may backup your temporary changes on exit and kill of xchroot as squashfs and incrementally restore them. -- xchroot will be simple to package: chmod +x and copy the program to /sbin; changelog, license, and contact address are currently located in the header of the bash script; license can be printed with xchroot --license note: future versions may come as .tar.gz including sub-programs and a man page (as long as there is no man page for xchroot you may simply package the index.html into /usr/share/doc) you will get update notifications via http://www.elstel.org/elstel.rss (for xchroot among other content on elstel) why you should prefer packaging xchroot from elstel over xchroot from mosquito: * the program is known to deliver good quality since years and is also officially recommended by the openSUSE build service guide * the program is being actively developed; completely new features are planned. * there is a good online documentation for the program which does also leverage usage by casual users and users new to Linux * the incremental --save and --restore options not supported by mosquito will make life of packagers easy and leverage usage from read-only root file systems like roots on blue ray * unionfs as well as aufs support guarantee for a broad applicability; f.i. when dual booting between a distribution that only supports unionfs * support also for casual users why you should not package xchroot from mosquito: * no accomplished cleanup, kill -9 of processes, bugs and fallacies I do not want to talk about. * writing a completely different program and then giving it the same name as an already existent program will confuse innocent users (mine has already been there for years and it has been published under the name xchroot for a much longer time.) * the program has not been tested well under different conditions * no unionfs, no socat, no incremental restore, no good automounting support. * no backward compatibility with Debian 6.0.x * the authors did not respond at all on my request to join the work on elstel and to put xchroot under a better, generally accepted license License: should be oss-compliant; author wants patches to be officially acknowledged by elstel.org; i.e. to make them available to all users even those who continue to download xchroot directly and those who use another distro. Download: may also use https P.S.: I believe it would also be good choice to support this script under the rescue console. When chrooting to a Debian installation you will otherwise have to mount a lot while mounting everything of use is still too much for manual mounting. This is a very common task for maintenance activities; I even do that when running grub-install. |