Package: buildd.emdebian.org Severity: important There needs to be some discussion about config packages for Grip and Crush.
grip-config is OK with debootstrap but awkward inside D-I. balloon3-config is too specialised and doesn't include all the support implemented in grip-config so cannot (currently) completely replace it. The task of grip-config ======================= 1. It's a placeholder for fixes that need to be reconciled within Debian. 1.1 Make install-info into a no-op as there are no infopages. 1.2 make update-alternatives not fail if an alternative points to a manpage as there are no manpages. (This does not remove the functionality of alternative manpages if using Debian packages.) 1.3 handle gcc-4.3-base misbehaviour whereby it fiddles around with files in /usr/share/doc/ in the postinst and fails if those files have been modified (as in Grip). e.g. we compress copyright and omit changelog.Debian.gz - both are targets of 'ln -s' in the gcc-4.3-base postinst. grip-config contains the files until gcc can be fixed. 2. It carries important dependencies that turn a debootstrap into a bootable system. The actual implementation will vary as bugs are fixed, so there should really only be a need for one config package for Grip. balloon3-config is much more specialised, including setting a default root password and having a slightly different range of dependencies. To work with debootstrap, the relevant config package(s) need to be either Priority: required or --include'd explicitly. To work with Debian-Installer, the relevant config package(s) must be brought in by *dependencies* and, in particular, in order to work for d-i and Grip, grip-config must be *unpacked* before gcc-4.3-base is upgraded to the Grip version. Therefore, grip-config is going to need to be a dependency of gcc-4.3-base and this can be done using an override file for the Grip repository. Equally, the override file can downgrade the priority of packages where necessary. I need information, testing and bug reports to determine a Policy for such packages and how to create new ones for other devices. -config packages are going to be the main method of customising Grip for particular devices. These packages can do lots more things, like: + Handle customisations for /etc/profile for automatic bash_completion support + Handle network customisation, like setting a default hostname. + Extend a basic Grip install to a full desktop install without needing Tasks via extra dependencies + Configure packages like splashy by setting appropriate kernel parameters for the framebuffer (need to look at the d-i pre-seeding code for how this is done because there is an option to do just this in d-i but the value for vga=$value is not pre-determined). Really, this probably needs to be a bug report against splashy to provide a udeb that calculates the necessary value and passes it to debconf. i.e. providing the "it-just-works" infrastructure that is so important in real life. The difficulty is retaining both debootstrap AND d-i support. This will require ongoing testing and bug filing. Note that it also appears impossible to customise the actual pre-seeding itself - any one website can only have one pre-seed file for Lenny, one for Squeeze, one for Etch etc. in order to use a sane pre-seeding location like "www.emdebian.org" without having to specify the complete path of "http://www.emdebian.org/d-i/lenny/preseed.cfg";. It's important because d-i doesn't have particularly robust safeguards against the specified URL giving a 404, in fact it can turn d-i into an infinite loop that is particularly annoying because the screen keeps flashing between virtual consoles, completely preventing the user from reading or retrieving the debug messages that flash past every second or two. -- System Information: Debian Release: 5.0 APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_GB.UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
