CD optimization

[Colin Watson]

On Sat, Sep 18, 2004 at 01:28:00PM +0000, John wrote:
> Colin Watson wrote:
> >On Sat, Sep 18, 2004 at 11:16:29AM +0000, John wrote:
> >>I can see how it would be a customisation headache, but deboostrap
> >>as implemented is that.
> >>
> >>What makes the tarball so much more difficullt than the
> >>non-customisable package list?
> >
> >It's completely trivial to customize. You can drop
> >/.disk/base_include and /.disk/base_exclude files onto the CD.
> 
> I don't see that in any debootstrap package I've ever installed, 
> including the Ubunto version.

It's implemented in base-installer, not debootstrap.

> >debootstrap really is the Right Answer to all sorts of questions, and
> >it's therefore an essential component of the installer. The solution to
> >problems encountered with it is to improve debootstrap and the code
> >around it, not to throw it away.
> 
> remember any time that gets saved by users gets multiplied out to 
> enormous numbers.

Remember that the base system installation is the point where any
non-control-freak user goes off and gets a cup of tea. A few seconds
simply are not important enough to kill maintainability here. We've gone
to a fair amount of effort to speed up the base installation as it is;
throwing out debootstrap is *not* a place I am prepared to go.

> You might be releasing new images frantically now, but that won't always 
> be the case.

Look at our release schedule sometime :-)

> A tool that exposes the content of a CD image and updates those contents 
> & contructs a new CD might work well.

That's not good enough for the release builds.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                    [cjwatson at canonical.com]