[fedora-arm] Possible File Formats for a Fedora ARM release

[Mark Langsdorf]

On 02/06/2012 10:33 PM, Chris Tyler wrote:

> 
> But back to the original question: what's the optimal way to package an
> installable image? I see several valid options:
> 
> (1)- Per-platform image with MBR plus one or more partitions, with the
> last partition shipped as minimal length and resizable to fill the
> device (either at installation or firstboot).
> 
> (2)- Per-platform tarball, including a tarball for a boot partition (if
> applicable) plus a tarball of the rootfs, plus some sort of layout
> config file (XML? script?) that configures how the partitioning is set
> up.
> 
> (3)- Generic per-arch (armv5tel/armv7hl) rootfs tarball plus
> per-platform boot tarball, separately downloaded. (Nice to cache the
> rootfs if installing into multiple, different devices, but messy as far
> as RPM knowledge of what's on the boot partition).
> 
> I think having an easy installer is ultimately more important than which
> format we use. To get tens of thousands of people running Fedora on
> Raspis in the next six months, for example, we need a tool that's
> friendly, dirt-simple to use, and ideally runs on Windows as well as
> Fedora.

Speaking for a possible minority position here, I'd also like to
see a solution that scales well for business customers looking
to provision dozens to hundreds of notes with real SATA drives.
A generic 2GB image intended for an SD-card is probably not going
to fit the bill.

I don't see how anything other than option 3 is sustainable over
any significant number of different platforms, though. So I'd
want to see a resizable generic per-arch rootfs that is
intended to be the last partition following 0 or more boot
partitions that are platform specific.

--Mark Langsdorf
Calxeda, Inc.