From 28a51258d8e824222c03cf40b89f66aa1705c761 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: David Cantrell Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:05:30 -1000 Subject: [PATCH] POLICY explains what I'm doing. --- POLICY | 37 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 37 insertions(+) create mode 100644 POLICY diff --git a/POLICY b/POLICY new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7bf7a304 --- /dev/null +++ b/POLICY @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +Policies for initrd.img and install.img image generation. + +lorax takes a different approach than the previous buildinstall set of scripts +for generating the boot and install images and tree data files. First, the +main ideas: + + * Configuration files control the list of packages to make images with. + + * Rather than explicitly listing the files to keep in the images (i.e., + we used to have KEEPFILE variables in upd-instroot), we now take what + the packages lay down and do a minimal tree scrubbing (remove docs, + for example). This is customizable through configuration files + because we will always have exceptions. + + * The main root tree generated from the package set is broken in to + /usr for the install.img and everything else for the initrd.img. + This is configurable through configuration files since we will + always have exceptions. + + * Static data such as files we need to place in /etc in the images or + other control files are stored in /usr/share/lorax and copied in to + the image staging tree. + +The approach of taking what the packages give us is a decision to make +maintenance of the image building tools easier. Whatever the packages lay +down should be sufficient for the installation images and we shouldn't +have to have our own list of files to keep and library gathering routines. +Let the packaging tools figure that out. + +The whole tool is written in Python with a driver program ("lorax"), but the +actual logic for the program is in the pylorax module. The idea behind this +is that tools such as pungi can potentially import pylorax directly and not +have to run the command line tool to do image generation work. That is, +pungi can use lorax programatically. + +This tool is still in the early stages of development (Sep 2008) and patches +and comments are welcome.