[Live-demo] 4.5alpha1 Build has started

[Alex Mandel]

On 01/31/2011 10:06 PM, Hamish wrote:
> Alex wrote:
>> I've started the build of the Alpha1.
>> I actually have 2 builds racing each other on 2 servers.
>> 1. is the same way we did the last few releases on a vmware
>> box logged in to an xterm session on an install of Xubuntu.
>> 2. is a chroot build on a 10.04 server
>>
>> ETA, tomorrow morning (~4-12 hours) since I probably won't
>> be awake when they finish.
>>
>> Build #2 will likely crash and burn in several ways related to "user"
>> not existing, no home directory etc. I will post in another
>> thread about that since I want to pursue this method in order to start
>> creating 100% automated builds that'll run faster.
> 
> fwiw I just posted some instructions for getting going with 'schroot'
> earlier today. see:  https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/ticket/1272
> 
> probably part of the chroot bootstrapping would be setting up the 'user'
> acc't, xfce4, etc. in an automated way? probably just a couple of lines
> of commands.
> 
>> I'm thinking a branch may be in order in svn to accommodate this idea?
> 
> unneeded complication? why not just add a new script in bin/ called
> bootstrap_chroot.sh or so and run/source from that instead?
> i.e. if the changes needed don't run deep into the rest of the build
> scripts (if we've been doing our job they shouldn't) how many parallel
> versions of scripts will be needed? proceed as you see fit of course, but
> if it were me I'd only worry about the branching if a whole bunch of files
> needed incompatible changes. Even then, it's easy to add a shell environment
> variable at the start of main.sh or somewhere to choose which path the rest
> of the scripts will follow. (main.sh would only set that to a default value
> if it wasn't already set by the user)
> 
> I believe there are git2svn scripts out there for merging back into the
> mainline later, but I'm no expert on that.
> 
> 
> trying to avoid fragmentation,
> Hamish
> 

The method I'm using closely follows:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDCustomization

There is no user account, this method specifically says you can not have
such a thing otherwise the live disc part will fail. Instead you put all
the things you want to show up in the home dir into /etc/skel.
When the live disc runs it will create the user and copy the /etc/skel
into it's home dir on-the-fly.

So yes anything that needs to be customized, xfce background, firefox
bookmarks, symlinks can just be placed into that folder. To me this is a
big change from the current scripts. Every instance of something being
put on the desktop or in the home dir would need to be moved.

git svn and bzr svn are exactly what I was looking at. I was thinking of
stashing it on github or launchpad for others to help, but that's when I
started thinking maybe we should just branch in svn.

I used to run a 32bit chroot in my 64bit back before flash and wine
could run in 64bit. So I'm somewhat familiar with the method, though not
sure what the difference between schroot, dchroot and chroot is.

Thanks,
Alex