I just checked in a very experimental[1] set of patches to libguestfs git repo which allow you to build a so-called 'supermin (super- minimized) appliance'. The fact that it passes many of the API tests is nothing short of remarkable.
To explain what this all means, read this:
http://git.et.redhat.com/?p=libguestfs.git;a=commitdiff;h=14ec52d3dc332a02dc...
Rich.
[1] With any luck, nothing will be broken _unless_ you do: ./configure --enable-supermin
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 08:40:31PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
I just checked in a very experimental[1] set of patches to libguestfs git repo which allow you to build a so-called 'supermin (super- minimized) appliance'. The fact that it passes many of the API tests is nothing short of remarkable.
All tests pass!
I forgot to mention in the original announcement that you will need febootstrap 2.2. The configure script should complain if you try to use an older version.
The new appliance is a mere 500K, so libguestfs RPMs will be a lot smaller. Of course that just means they will have many more dependencies, so the amount pulled down will be the same or greater.
I will push a version of this into Rawhide so people can test it out.
Rich.
Very nice. I could have used a variation on this in a previous life building one-off Redhat-derived distros. My hack was considerably less clever.
On 06/15/2009 03:40 PM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
To explain what this all means, read this: +Furthermore there are certain unlikely changes in the packages on the +host which could break a supermin appliance, eg. an updated library +which depends on an additional data file.
So does this mean that it doesn't consult RPM for those dependencies on each build (or a 're-config' pass?) or just that there may be poorly-constructed RPM's that don't properly reference their dependencies?
-Bill
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 10:46:52PM -0400, Bill McGonigle wrote:
Very nice. I could have used a variation on this in a previous life building one-off Redhat-derived distros. My hack was considerably less clever.
On 06/15/2009 03:40 PM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
To explain what this all means, read this: +Furthermore there are certain unlikely changes in the packages on the +host which could break a supermin appliance, eg. an updated library +which depends on an additional data file.
So does this mean that it doesn't consult RPM for those dependencies on each build (or a 're-config' pass?) or just that there may be poorly-constructed RPM's that don't properly reference their dependencies?
It doesn't consult RPM at all (it'd be far too slow).
BTW 1.0.47 was quite broken. I just released 1.0.48 which works ...
Rich.
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Bill McGonigle -
Richard W.M. Jones