Public SourceMage Discussion List

["Wyatt Draggoo" <wyatt AT draggoo.com>]

> One problem I see with having one ISO for all architectures (now that I
> think more on it) is that every binary on the CD will have to be
> duplicated, once for each architecture.  Right now that wouldn't be bad,
> we'd just need them all compiled twice (x86 and PPC), but soon (I hope)
> we'll add a third (Sparc), and perhaps later, even more.  This would get
> out of hand and, perhaps, make the ISO too big for one CD.
> 
> Also, I don't think people with limited bandwidth want to download an
> all-in-one ISO when they just want, say, the x86 version of it (why d/l an
> extra 100Mb for platforms you don't use?).
> 
> So I guess we could stick with LILO (which I like, but am starting to like
> GRUB better) for x86 (until Chris and I get the HURD stuff working :),
> then we'll need GRUB for that) and GRUB for the others (unless yaboot is
> better for PPC than GRUB...)

True, to a point, but we're trying to get to a point where *very* little is
on the install ISO anyway.  The more that's downloaded during the install
process, the less that needs to be updated later.  There will have to be a
few binaries, just to get shells and things, but after that, the
appropriate gcc for your platform gets downloaded, then that gcc is used to
build those few binaries included on the CD and gcc from source, and
everything is downloaded and built during the install.

I'm not sure how using a multi-platform install ISO as a rescue platform at
that point is going to work.  The rescue portion will need a lot more
binaries than the install portion, and people won't want to download and
build a ton of software just so they can revert back to a non-broken kernel
they forgot to add as linux-old to LILO (shame on them!).  Possibly a
rescue-<platform> spell that downloads the appropriate binary tarball of
rescue utilities for that platform.

Either that, or I'm tired and babbling, and should leave work right about
now.

Wyatt

--
Wyatt Draggoo