Reduce "Core" to 1 Binary CD? -- WAS: Request for Packages in Fedora Core 3

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Mon, 24 May 2004 13:05:09 -0400, seth vidal <skvidal at phy.duke.edu> wrote:

 
> The cds, right now, must be ordered based on the likelihood of certain
> things being installed in a normal install. But with separate extra cds
> you could just group them based on similarity of the item.

I would agree with that as an ideal. I am concerned about dependancy
chains that span more than one extra cd that get whacked out and make
you bounce back and forth between extra cds and back to the Core cd to
pick up a lib or something to complete the install. Whatever gets
implemented...i would like a cd install process to be able to minimize
the number of times a specific cd has to be reloaded for use:
load cd A
load cd B
load cd C
if i have to reload cd A again becuase cd C wants a dependancy from cd
A, that could get painful in the general case.

I guess one thing you can do is make the "simularity grouped" extra
cds self-consitant by placing needed dependancy packages into each cd
image as needed. So maybe extras A and extras B cds include a few
duplicate packages to prevent cross cd image dependancies. And then if
yer cd image gets too big thanks to these duplicate packages..you just
break up the grouping into more cds.
This though, still doesn't take into account what happens if you need
a Core dependancy that you dont have installed yet. Potentially
firstboot is going to have to ask you to re-insert the Core media for
each extra cd you want to use. So if there are 4 extra cds, defined
along "simularity" lines...thats still 4 times you might have to
insert Core media to grab dependancies you dont have installed yet....
yucky.

Or perhaps an approach by which you tell firstboot which cds you want
to use by loading them in some random order as a first step so
firstboot can grab the metadata about dependancies and what
not...figure out the dependancy chain installation order...and then
firstboot will ask you for the install media in an order that minimize
the number of times you have to insert install media. So when you are
doing the actual package install...firstboot will ask you for each cd,
including Core media, only once minimizing the amount of human
interaction with the process.

-jef