[LinuxBIOS] LinuxBIOS Debian package.

[Uwe Hermann]

Hi,

On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 06:16:20PM +0200, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> > linuxbios - metapackage which draws in all/most other packages
> 
> ie. the other two?

Yes, basically. Maybe there will be more, not sure yet.


> > linuxbios-doc - documentation
> > linuxbios-utils - standalone utilities, e.g. romcc, flashrom, ...
>  
> romcc is recompiled each time an image is built (which takes a lot less
> time than running romcc)

Is this a strict requirement? Wouldn't it be possible to compile it
once, and distribute it as /usr/bin/romcc in the Debian package?
Are any compile-time options involved (vs. runtime/commandline options?)


> > Maybe also something like linuxbios-src which contains the rest, and
> > which can be used to compile images(?)
> 
> I would start out with "linuxbios-utils"

Yes, that's definately the easiest one and the most useful, probably.


> as the only package and
> pack flashrom, the lxbios tool (see fm).

lxbios should rather be an extra package as it has a different
"upstream" tarball and author(s). But maybe linuxbios could draw it
in, i.e. linuxbios could be a metapackage which not only depends on
linuxbios-* packages, but also related stuff such as lxbios.
Maybe it should have another name then, though.

Also, I'll have to check the lxbios license, the DISCLAIMER file has some
strange stuff which might pose problems for Debian...


> If you want to make it more
> generic, you could call it firmware-utils or bios-utils and pack 
> openbios' toke and detok with it.

Hm, openbios could be another package (or maybe multiple ones, e.g.
openbios-utils?), or we could have multiple payload packages, e.g.

linuxbios-payload-openbios
linuxbios-payload-etherboot
linuxbios-payload-*

Or linuxbios-payloads which contains all of them?

I'll have to think a bit more about this... this is definately the most
complex project I've ever packaged.


> The build process would have to be changed to use a prebuilt romcc, and
> I don't think this makes too much sense, as everything works fine as is,
> and there's no benefit to doing so.

If there's no reason to build romcc for each compile it would be nice to
only have _one_ binary in /usr/bin, IHMO (see above).


> Also, I would not swamp the repository with a number of packages just
> for the sake of doing so (even though this is commonly accepted in debian
> development) but look at target users of such a package and their
> requirements.

Yes, it should not be too many packages (although it's really not
uncommon in Debian, e.g. there are more than 30 xserver-xorg-*
packages).


> Having a flash utility like flashrom integrated definitely 
> makes sense. Packing source code in packages in my opinion does not (ok,
> the kernel may for some reason be an exception here)

I'm not too comfortable with shipping code either (e.g. in /usr/share,
/usr/src, or something), but I think it's a matter of convenience - users
could have one Debian box for LinuxBIOS work and could apt-get all the
required tools and code to work with/on LinuxBIOS.


Cheers, Uwe.
-- 
Uwe Hermann 
http://www.hermann-uwe.de
http://www.it-services-uh.de  | http://www.crazy-hacks.org 
http://www.holsham-traders.de | http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org
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