On 2016-12-12 at 22:26:43 +0000, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > ok. right. so the next questions are: how flexible are you prepared > to be to get this working, and do you *absolutely* need to use > debian-installer to get this up-and-running? > [...] > the reason i ask is because the last time i actually used > debian-installer on arm hardware was way back in 2010,
Actually, I was used to use debootstrap to put debian with a custom kernel on various boards, but in the last couple of years I've moved to trying to use the installer as much as possible, the main reason for it being that it's the easiest way to make sure that the board is actually supported by a sane kernel and will continue to work in the future. Of course, the reason why I started doing it is that there are a number of boards where it *does* work out of the box (mostly the ones listed on InstallingDebianOn/Allwinner on the wiki), and this IMHO makes it worth the effort to investigate and document what it takes do to the same on boards where it doesn't work out of the box, but it can be made to work (including possibly opening bugs / proposing fixes to the testing installer, of course). I don't think this approach works when you are developing a new board and need it to work *right now*, of course, but I do believe that it may be worth as an aim for when the board is done and available to the public. -- Elena ``of Valhalla''
