On 9/6/07, Karen W. Tung <Karen.Tung at sun.com> wrote: > We are in the process of putting together the feature list for the > Distribution > Constructor project beyond the prototype release. The > proof-of-concept Distro Constructor has very limited functionalities as > specified our project page > (http://opensolaris.org/os/project/caiman/Constructor/) > > We have come up with the following for the early 2008 release. > This is a very high level list of features. When we come to a more final > list, we will have further discussions about details on each item. > > * From a GUI, the user should be able to select a list of packages to > be included to build a custom distro.
Selecting packages is likely to prove tedious. While selection at the individual package level is necessary, I believe that something like package clusters would be a more useful unit of selection. (And I have tried to build a jumpstart profile builder, which isn't that different in concept.) > * From the command line, user provide the Distro Constructor (DC) with > a list of packages. The DC will pull in all other necessary > packages > to create a self-consistent installation image. > > * Given an existing distribution, the DC will create a new > distribution > based on addition or subtraction of contents as specified by the > user. How does subtraction work? In particular, does the distribution description know which packages were specified, and which were added to satisfy dependencies? And if a package were subtracted, what happens to those other packages that were only added in order to satisfy the dependencies of the now removed package? > * Special configurations specified in the GUI or on the command line > can be saved to a file, and the file can be used as inputs to the > DC. > > * The DC release will come with a few predefined "useful" > configurations, which can be helpful to users who want to create > their > custom distribution with some minor modification. I would like to see specific examples of the sort of configurations under consideration . In a sense, though, if suitable higher level groupings of packages are defined then the construction of useful configurations becomes much easier. It's not necessary for all these "clusters" to be defined by the DC project, or even by OpenSolaris. It would be nice if there was a format to define a "cluster" that could be loaded into the DC, so that third parties could define units of functionality to meet their specific needs while relying on the DC to build the rest of the image. > Features not to be included in the early 2008 release, but will be > consider for the future. > > * Create a distribution based on an installed and configured system. Why not? Or, in what sense is this feature different from feeding the list of packages on an existing system as input to the DC? -- -Peter Tribble http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
