[Fedora-livecd-list] [PATCH] --addXdir , facility to easily add external directories to target sysrootfs OR isofs

[Douglas McClendon]

Jeremy Katz wrote:
> A few thoughts...
> 
> On Wed, 2007-07-25 at 18:06 -0500, Douglas McClendon wrote:
>> I know there may already be some similar functionality already in revisor, this 
>> patch adds it to livecd-tools
>>
>> The two new options are
>>
>> --addidir=<directory>
>> and
>> --addsdir=<directory>
> 
> First off, at a glance, the options just look like gobbledy-gook to
> me :-)  In cases like this, it's almost always better to spell out what
> is meant rather than an abbreviation that isn't immediately obvious.

aesthetics.  rename however you like.

> The second thing is that having this as command-line options leads to an
> increased chance of the live image build not being reproducible.  As
> much as possible, the movement has been to specifying things within the
> kickstart config rather than having command line options for specifying
> things.  

I think this is where ideals meet practicality.  But to work with you, would you 
be happier with a patch, where say, instead of --addsdir, there was 
--add-user-system-data, which behaved exactly the same, but the implementation 
mechanism included rolling the directory into a dirt simple noarch rpm with 
almost no data in the specfile?  I.e. do the rpmbuild -bs, rpmbuild --rebuild, 
and createrepo for the user?

I suppose it really isn't that hard (though it will be months before such a 
thing makes it to the top of my priorities).

> 
> In fact, I'd like to overall entirely deprecate the use of most of the
> command-line arguments in favor of having them specified in the
> kickstart config.  And at the same time, I also want to look at making
> sure that we include the kickstart config on the image that's created so
> that people can more easily see how the image was created, modify it,
> and then create their own.  What do other people think of this?  The
> things which really "matter" which aren't currently expressed in the
> config are prelink and the uncompressed size of the rootfs.  The latter
> is easy (we just add interpretation of part / --size ...).  Adding the
> former is probably not terrible to do either.
> 
>> Both may be invoked any number of times.  The contents of the directories 
>> specified, will be copied to the target livecd.  addsdir adds the contents to 
>> the rootfs of the target, while addidir adds the contents to the iso9660fs of 
>> the target.
> 
> Then when and what of these occurring seems fine.  Although I wonder if
> we'd be better off just making it so that you could do %post --nochroot
> and also moving %post to be run later

I just saw a mention on kickstart-list, about using just such a scenario, and 
wondered if it was really possible.  Of course, as far as reproducability goes, 
it is a bit wonky, as %post --nochroot seems to me to be just as much a supreme 
breaking of reproducability as the --addsdir thing.  I.e. the environment 
outside the chroot, is going to be entirely different for every build 
(especially traditional anaconda kickstart usage, versus livecd-creator usage).

Also, in my opinion, adding things to the isodir really has /nothing/ to do with 
the system being defined in the kickstart, and really should be separate (maybe 
even separate tool, 'livecd-repacker'?).  I mean, suppose you want to roll your 
own mp3/ogg library on your CD.  Not the sort of thing that seems appropriate 
for a kickstart.

-dmc