Merge lp:~tom-gall/linaro-seeds/fix752843-linaro.natty into lp:linaro-seeds/natty

[Tom Gall]

Break off the nano seed from headless. Compact the seed such that it is not tied to other seeds and strip out as many unneeded packages as possible so it represents a very minimal core set of functionality.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

I don't understand the choices that are made here for slimming down the 'required' package set.

 - grep, gzip, hostname, mount, and passwd are dropped. With the exception of 'passwd', these are Essential: yes packages, meaning they may be used by any Ubuntu package without declaring a dependency. How was the determination made to cut these packages (and not others)?

 - if we were enabling busybox instead, then it would make sense to drop most of these, and others besides (e.g., coreutils), but I don't see busybox added anywhere. Should it be?

- * isc-dhcp-client # LaMontJones

Why remove isc-dhcp-client but not the rest of the network stack? (or at least netcat and ntpdate, I would think?) Is it useful to have ifupdown on here without dhcp-client?

+ * mountall #needed by upstart
+ * initscripts #needed by upstart

I don't think it should be necessary to seed these separately then; doesn't upstart pull them in automatically as dependencies?

[Tom Gall (tom-gall)]

Remember this is step one. Yes there is a busybox package (it's in my ppa) that does replace some of the essential packages, however that is not required to get a substantial start on slimming down the nano image and doing so does require a set of changes to live-build that we've discussed. As discussed I'd like to get this first step in and then get to what could be potentially more controversially changes.

That said, this seed started as a conglomeration of the various base seeds. Once assembled, various packages were then removed. You want to keep that in mind.

Remember that the image when built will contain the full set of Essential packages regardless if they are listed in the seed.

If this change can go forward, step2 is the busybox package when sets up the ability to replace several essential packages.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

> Remember that the image when built will contain the full set of
> Essential packages regardless if they are listed in the seed.

Oh, this isn't obvious to me. What forces them to be included, and do you have a plan for how to get them excluded later?

I still think you should avoid seeding mountall and initscripts directly, and would like to know your thoughts on the network stack question.

Sorry if this strikes you as nitpicky. If you are satisfied with the correctness of your changes, you have access to commit them directly. :) But since you've asked for review, I'm giving you my honest assessment - I don't think it makes sense to unseed the dhcp client without also looking at what other network-related packages it makes sense to ship, and would like to see changesets that reflect a logical examination of that question rather than picking off those packages that individually give us the biggest size savings but leave us with an incoherent set of packages with no explainable selection criteria.

[lp:~tom-gall/linaro-seeds/fix752843-linaro.natty]

64. By Tom Gall on 2011-04-30

add isc-dhcp-client back in, will go to busybox version eventually

=== modified file 'STRUCTURE'
--- STRUCTURE	2011-02-28 23:49:46 +0000
+++ STRUCTURE	2011-05-01 02:50:44 +0000
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 include platform.natty
 linaro-headless: minimal
+linaro-nano:
 linaro-development: linaro-headless
 linaro-x11-base: linaro-headless
 linaro-netbook-efl: linaro-x11-base

=== added file 'linaro-nano'
--- linaro-nano	1970-01-01 00:00:00 +0000
+++ linaro-nano	2011-05-01 02:50:44 +0000
@@ -0,0 +1,88 @@
+Task-Per-Derivative: 1
+Task-Section: user
+Task-Description: Linaro Nano, a very tiny system
+Task-Extended-Description: This task provides the Linaro Nano profile
+Task-Metapackage: linaro-nano
+Task-Key: linaro-nano
+Task-Name: linaro-nano
+Task-Seeds: 
+
+ * Feature: no-follow-recommends
+
+
+Linaro Nano profile started as a fork of ubuntu's minimal and has been slimed down.
+
+Note that some packages that form the core of an Ubuntu-based system are in the required seed, from which this seed inherits. The minimal seed describes those packages at Priority: important.
+
+Recommends are followed when processing this seed even though debootstrap doesn't do that. This may occasionally produce confusing results; however, it should be correct at release time, since the results of processing the seed are synced to Priority: important overrides.
+
+== From required ==
+
+ * base-files
+ * base-passwd    # ColinWatson
+ * bash
+ * bsdutils       # LaMontJones
+ * coreutils
+ * debianutils
+ * diffutils
+ * dpkg
+ * e2fsprogs
+ * findutils
+ * login
+ * ncurses-base
+ * ncurses-bin
+ * perl-base
+ * python-minimal
+ * tar            # LaMontJones
+ * util-linux     # LaMontJones
+
+Our init system:
+
+ * upstart
+ * mountall  #needed by upstart
+ * initscripts  #needed by upstart
+
+In some sense, debconf isn't truly required, but it makes our life a lot easier to have it installed in the first pass.
+
+ * debconf
+
+Other packages necessary to get started:
+
+ * dash               # Much faster default shell
+ * makedev
+ * mawk
+ * procps
+
+== Comfortable Unix System ==
+
+Programs and packages necessary for both the proper functionality of the system and that any user would expect to find on a modern Unix-like system.
+
+ * apt
+ * apt-utils
+ * console-setup     # https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/sane-installer-keyboard
+ * kbd
+ * gnupg             # introduce security from the very base
+ * initramfs-tools   # needed for the Ubuntu kernel
+ * module-init-tools # required for kernel 2.6
+ * netbase
+ * rsyslog  
+ * sudo              # LaMontJones
+ * ubuntu-keyring     # for authenticated package downloads
+ * udev
+ * whiptail          # for debconf's Dialog frontend
+
+== Networking ==
+
+These provide various networking services, all should be configured in a client-only state with the server de-activated unless the user requires it.
+
+ * iproute
+ * ifupdown
+ * net-tools
+ * ntpdate        # FabioMassimoDiNitto
+ * isc-dhcp-client
+ * iputils-ping
+ * netcat-openbsd # FabioMassimoDiNitto
+
+== Linaro ==
+
+ * linaro-overlay-minimal			# ships branding and auto login serial/console feature