On 02/06/2012 10:33 PM, Chris Tyler wrote:
But back to the original question: what's the optimal way to package an
installable image? I see several valid options:
(1)- Per-platform image with MBR plus one or more partitions, with the
last partition shipped as minimal length and resizable to fill the
device (either at installation or firstboot).
(2)- Per-platform tarball, including a tarball for a boot partition (if
applicable) plus a tarball of the rootfs, plus some sort of layout
config file (XML? script?) that configures how the partitioning is set
up.
(3)- Generic per-arch (armv5tel/armv7hl) rootfs tarball plus
per-platform boot tarball, separately downloaded. (Nice to cache the
rootfs if installing into multiple, different devices, but messy as far
as RPM knowledge of what's on the boot partition).
I think having an easy installer is ultimately more important than which
format we use. To get tens of thousands of people running Fedora on
Raspis in the next six months, for example, we need a tool that's
friendly, dirt-simple to use, and ideally runs on Windows as well as
Fedora.
Speaking for a possible minority position here, I'd also like to
see a solution that scales well for business customers looking
to provision dozens to hundreds of notes with real SATA drives.
A generic 2GB image intended for an SD-card is probably not going
to fit the bill.
I don't see how anything other than option 3 is sustainable over
any significant number of different platforms, though. So I'd
want to see a resizable generic per-arch rootfs that is
intended to be the last partition following 0 or more boot
partitions that are platform specific.
--Mark Langsdorf
Calxeda, Inc.