Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 16:42:08 +0100 (CET) From: Andrzej Bialecki <abial@nask.pl> To: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl> Cc: picoBSD <small@FreeBSD.ORG>, jkh@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Trinux (+ a proposal) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.02A.9812191624150.24237-100000@korin.warman.org.pl> In-Reply-To: <XFMail.981219121331.asmodai@wxs.nl>
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On Sat, 19 Dec 1998, Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai wrote: > Hi guys, > > http://www.trinux.org > > Looks interesting, bet we could best that ;) Yes this is very nice set of tools. I'm sure it took a lot of work to prepare it. Whether we can beat that - well, this would require radically different approach to our currently used model of crunched binaries. It's clever, but too limiting. Recently I was thinking about it and I'm inclined to change this into something more flexible, something along packages system. My idea is to have initially on startup a small (ca. 300-400kB) MFS containing init and a package handling program. Then, the init would run the packager, and this in turn would examine the list of wanted packages, together with their space requirements. Then it would either create appropriate MFS, mount it let's say on /usr/, and unpack all required packages into this MFS; or, in case of bigger systems with HDD, just make sure the required packages are present, and if not - perhaps install them from some media (like HDD or network, or floppy). Advantages of this model: * you're no longer required to have sources for all programs - you need only to have a small binary package. * you can install only those programs you really want to have on the floppy. * the floppy can be DOS formatted, which allows you to squeeze more things on it, and it's easier editable. * you can easily add/remove components from the system. * it's significantly easier to build bigger systems this way. ("bigger" means something between picobsd and normal FreeBSD installation) Disadvantages: * all programs will have to be dynamically linked, and ld.so and a set of libraries must be provided as well. This significantly raises memory/space requirements. * we would need some other (probably incompatible with 'normal' packages) packaging system. Why? Because it has to contain not only dependencies on other packages, but also on system libraries (which 'normal' package system takes for granted), and it should contain space requirements as well. OTOH, perhaps this can be done using 'normal' packaging - I'm not sure. Any comments? Andrzej Bialecki -------------------- ++-------++ ------------------------------------- <abial@nask.pl> ||PicoBSD|| FreeBSD in your pocket? Go and see: Research & Academic |+-------+| "Small & Embedded FreeBSD" Network in Poland | |TT~~~| | http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/ -------------------- ~-+==---+-+ ------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-small" in the body of the message
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