RE: multistrap support

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

Hi Henning,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Henning Schild [mailto:henning.schild@siemens.com]
> Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2019 12:19 AM
> To: hayashi kazuhiro(林 和宏 ○ＳＷＣ□ＯＳＴ)
> <kazuhiro3.hayashi@toshiba.co.jp>
> Cc: isar-users@googlegroups.com; meta-eid@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: multistrap support
> 
> Hi,
> 
> in fact Isar does not really care too much about how exactly
> setup_root_file_system does what it does. Just the interface has to be
> stable at some point. So you take a list of repos and packages and off
> you go ... to put it overly-simple.
> 
> rootfs = strap(repos, package-names)
> 
> That is why the switch from multistrap to debootstrap was relatively
> simple. So you could even think about switching back or switching to
> yet another <funny>-strap.

Thanks, I got it.

I'm now watching isar_bootstrap() which creates base tree with debootstrap.
It seems to run one debootstrap command with one primary apt repository,
then merge available updates from other apt repositories by `apt-get dist-upgrade`.
I understood that these steps could replace calling multistrap command.

> 
> What i would like to understand is why you care about multistrap and
> why you think the strap-tool has an implication on collaboration with
> other projects? Where do you see the risk of not being able to share
> efforts with other projects that use multistrap?

I should explain that I'm not heavy user of Isar at the moment actually,
and I'm prototyping another build tool:
https://events.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ELCE2018_Debian-Yocto-State-of-the-Art_r6_Kazuhiro-Hayashi.pdf
Many important visions of that project are from Isar development policy,
and tooling is one of the most important topic.

I WAS thinking that bootstrapping with multiple apt repositories
are complicated and existing tools like multistrap should be used
because of the fact (history) that multistrap has been developed as an independent package
from debootstrap to support multiple repositories.
However, if we can replace multistrap functionality by the above
(simple and easy to understand) steps with debootstrap,
the strap-tool might not affect collaboration of Isar and other projects so much.

Regards,
Kazu

> 
> Henning
> 
> Am Wed, 13 Feb 2019 13:14:57 +0000
> schrieb <kazuhiro3.hayashi@toshiba.co.jp>:
> 
> > 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.)
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > Kazu
> >
> >  Kazuhiro Hayashi
> >  Corporate Software Engineering & Technology Center
> >  Toshiba Corporation
> >  Tel: +81-44-549-2476
> >  E-mail: kazuhiro3.hayashi@toshiba.co.jp
> >
> >