[Debian-np-devel] What are we missing?

[Otavio Salvador]

|| On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 18:31:32 +0200
|| Enrico Zini <zinie@cs.unibo.it> wrote: 

ez> Hello,
ez> While preparing the slides, I started thinking.

ez> Last weekend, I heard a very nice phrase from a LUG Volunteer in Empoli:

ez>  "we want to do things that are technically simple, and socially complex"

ez> with the idea that if you get into things that are technically complex,
ez> you have a very good chance of not getting anything done at all.

In Debian-BR-CDD we think in same way. We are doing small steps in way
to get the 1.0 release together with Sarge.

ez> Obviously, that group of people with this philosophy is able to get very
ez> good things done.

ez> So, now I think: suppose that we decide that we don't want to do
ez> anything technical at all, and just reuse existing things: what are we
ez> missing to be able, as Vagrant suggests, to release a Debian-NP
ez> distribution based on Sarge, when Sarge releases?

ez> A round of questions to paint the current situation:

ez>  - Can we select packages?  Yes.
ez>     - cdd-dev allows creating metapackages, and those work well for
ez>       package selection, including allowing good upgrade experience

And exist some others ways todo it too. Using tasksel is my prefered one.

ez>  - Can we custom-configure packages?  I don't know.
ez>     - What is the status with CDDs wrt configurations?
ez>     - Is there something working that also allows decent upgrading?

Yes. We can do it using three approuchs: replacing files, patching
files and doing debconf preseed.

ez>  - Is the installer working?  I don't know.
ez>     - What is still missing that is really necessary?
ez>     - What are the custom questions we want to add?
ez>     - What are the installer questions that we want to pre-answer?

We have a good control about it. All new installer have support for
Debconf preseed so we need use this.

ez>  - Can we build CDs?  I don't know.
ez>     - What are we missing?
ez>     - How are sarge CDs built anyway?

I don't have problems to build a updated CD set for testing. I think
we should try to have a pre release and then start to fix issues.

This is what I'm doing in Debian-BR-CDD.

ez> Another magic phrase I've been hearing recently is:

ez>  "this would be cool, but too much for 1.0: let's postpone it to 1.1"

ez> I think that if we put the two magic phrases together, we have a very
ez> good chance of releasing something great together with Sarge, or even IN
ez> Sarge :)

In sarge is dificult since many things depends of a lot of testing and
time to pass the testing scripts but with sarge I don't see problems.

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