[Angstrom-devel] [RFC] Using narcissus as preferred way to build images for release

[John Willis]

Hi,

> In an effort to reduce the skillset needed to get involved into
> angstrom

That strikes me as a very good idea. Anything that keeps momentum around
machine releases (testing or otherwise) is good.

It also makes it much more likely that a dev with a supported machine 'in
the draw' may run off a quick image test now and then (and upload to
testing) rather then put it off as they can't face the rebuild/reconfig time
for their local environment.

> I'd like to propose this:
> 
> Narcissus[1] is the preferred way to build an image to be put in the
> download are for users.
> 
> The workflow would be:
> 
> 1) go to http://amethyst.openembedded.net/~koen/narcissus/
> 2) select machine, packages and click 'build me'
> 3) downloading resulting image
> 4) test it
> 5) Convert it to the proper format (e.g. ubifs, jffs2, tar.bz2, ext2,
> installkit)
> 6) upload it to angstrom-distribution.org
> 7) Announce it

Seems eminently sane.

> Note that step 5 can be scripted, but due to php/fakeroot limitations
> we
> can't do it all with narcissus. An option would be that narcissus spits
> out the scripts needed.

I wonder if there are some offline/fork options around that. I guess
anything other than giving the user scripts is going to be a big hack
somewhere ;-).
 
> As the narcissus page points out, patches are welcome. If you are
> missing packages, send me a patch :)
>
> So, what do you think about this proposal?

Gets my vote.

John