[Dev] Install media releng / I made some changes

[fauno]

Luke Shumaker <lukeshu at lukeshu.com> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> (I apologize, there isn't much structure to this email)
>
> I wanted to create a thread to discuss release engineering on our
> install media.  What the processes are when creating those releases,
> how we test them, and what changes we want to make.
>
> In my view, there are 3 install classes of install images:
>  - x86 ISOs
>  - iPXE images (we don't currently make these, and it is blocking and
>    update of ParabolaWeb)

i was just asking about pxe support on our images, because i needed to
install a parabola system and had to use an arch iso which has it
built-in while ours doesn't.  it's supposed to be on archiso and added
automatically.  bill told me i should test the new isos to see if there
was support for it, but it was too late :)

>  - ARM images (we don't currently make these, and we totally should)
>
> Changes I've made
>  - I've re-added the 'latest' symlink in the '/iso/' folder on repo.
>  - I've merge the '/iso-previous/' folder on repo back in to '/iso/'.
>    There's no need to split them off.
> Changes I'm doing
>  - Adjusting repoindex and parabolaweb so that parabolaweb's
>    `syncisos` command works (and add that to the crontab), so that our
>    releases show up at https://www.parabola.nu/releng/releases/ and
>    https://www.parabola.nu/releng/releases/

great!

> Things I'm concerned about:
>  - Do we put the sourceballs on the install CD?  If not, do we ensure
>    that sourceballs for old packages don't get cleaned up if that
>    package is on a CD we still publish?
>  - `archboot` is a testing replacement for `archiso`.  Do we have any
>    plans to ditch `parabolaiso` for a `parabolaboot`?

i'm not really sure parabolaiso is still following archiso's
development? (see above about pxe) from what i gather of bill and
megver's email there's at least two forks in play??

>  - I think it would be really cool if any files not owned by a package
>    or modified from the vanilla version on the install media were
>    managed by [holo][].

what i always wondered about shipping conf files as pacman packages is
how will they be treated since they belong to another package.  for
instance if you ship pacman.conf and then install the holo package,
won't you get it as pacman.conf.pacnew?

>  - Bill Auger tells me that parabolaiso requires root.  I'd like to
>    understand why.  Can we use unprivileged user/mount namespaces to
>    avoid this on the build server?
>  - I think the release process should be more documented, and more
>    automated (FOSS automation scripts are the best form of process
>    documentation :P)

+1 a few years ago we even talked of a community repository for parabola
isos :P

> [holo]: http://holocm.org/
>
> That said, install media creation is the part of Parabola that I am
> most removed from and ignorant to.
>
> -- 
> Happy hacking,
> ~ Luke Shumaker
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> Dev at lists.parabola.nu
> https://lists.parabola.nu/mailman/listinfo/dev

-- 
 D
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