RE: multistrap support

[<kazuhiro3.hayashi@toshiba.co.jp>]

Hi Jan,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jan Kiszka [mailto:jan.kiszka@siemens.com]
> Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2019 1:15 AM
> To: hayashi kazuhiro(林 和宏 ○ＳＷＣ□ＯＳＴ)
> <kazuhiro3.hayashi@toshiba.co.jp>; isar-users@googlegroups.com
> Cc: meta-eid@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: multistrap support
> 
> On 13.02.19 14:14, kazuhiro3.hayashi@toshiba.co.jp wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I would like to know if isar still has some plans to use multistrap again
> > (or similar existing tools if exists) to generate target images.
> >
> > Multistrap for isar-image-base has been removed by the following commit:
> >
> https://github.com/ilbers/isar/commit/19a314559178f7afd93ce3dafe8c8647
> ca6c8884
> > and replaced by setup_root_file_system() in
> isar-bootstrap-helper.bbclass,
> > which seems to use (pre-built?)
> isar-bootstrap-$ROOTFS_DISTRO-$ROOTFS_ARCH
> > as the base tree instead of running the debootstrap process.
> >
> > I guess that the main purposes of quitting multistrap is that
> > there is no big update for a few years (though the last update is 2.2.10
> on Nov. 2018)
> > Are there any other reasons?
> > (Some bugs difficult to be fixed, mismatches with isar specification,
> etc.)
> 
> Indeed, the key reason (beside some technical issues) for no longer using
> multistrap in Isar was that the multistrap creator himself explained to
> us that
> it's dead and we should rather sooner than later move away from it.

Thank you for the detailed information.

> 
> We then decided to pick up the most commonly used bootstrapping mechanism
> for
> Debian today, simply to reduce the risk of running into problems no one
> else is
> seeing - and fixing.

Reasonable approach.

> 
> >
> > The current isar-bootstrap based approach would work fine for isar system,
> > but in that case, it might be difficult to share efforts for
> > developing and maintaining the functionality with non isar users.
> > I'm just interested in the future plan of isar.
> 
> This takes concrete ideas what you consider worth sharing and what
> interfaces
> this may imply. Debootstrap is not married to Isar but it would take some
> use
> case to make that shareable or replaceable with something else.

I was thinking a kind of the following things, mentioned in the reply to Claudius:
> mybootstrap [debootstrap_OPTION] <suite> <target> [<mirror_list> [<script>]]
For examples, I assumes that the following apt repositories could be listed in the <mirror_list>
1. The official Debian apt repository (or a (local) mirror of it)
2. An apt repository for specific custom distro (like Debian deliverable)
3. An apt repository for specific project/product (includes apps, etc.)
If a command like the above provided, we can always generate the rootfs tree
only by one command (+ chroot apt install) without setting any tools up
(probably for experiment purposes).
This kind of technical discussion would be kept in other replies...

Regards,
Kazu