Package: wnpp
Version: 2.3; issued 2013-08-28
Subject: ITP: 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.
--
note: xchroot is already packaged experimentally in the obs yet
needing to be moved to mentors.debian.net (repo is referenced by
www.elstel.org/xchroot).
why we 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 we 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.
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