Peter Tribble wrote: >> * 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.)
I think unfortunately you'd probably want the best of both worlds - while a lot of people probably wouldn't care much beyond a package cluster level, I imagine there would be those that would want a finer level of control. I haven't seen any Linux distribution do the finer control well though, so it would be interesting to see what can be done here. >> * 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? I took this to mean, here's a distribution that I'm running, with an installed package set. Go make a distribution from it (though this doesn't migrate configuration). >> * 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 . Similarly. Would specifying the target size be an option in the interface, so that you would immediately know whether the resulting distribution could fit on a CD/DVD/USB. It would be interesting (though I'm not sure how useful) if we could specific the compressed size *and* the installed size. Glynn
