[arch-dev-public] makechrootpkg without aufs2

[Aaron Griffin]

On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 11:39 PM, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 9:59 PM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 7:29 PM, Allan McRae <allan at archlinux.org> wrote:
>>> On 24/01/10 09:08, Pierre Schmitz wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi devs,
>>>> <snip>
>>>>
>>>> This can be easily done by changing this in makechrootpkg:
>>>>
>>>>     mount -t aufs none -o "dirs=$chrootdir/$LAYER=rw:$chrootdir/root=ro"
>>>> "$uniondir"
>>>>
>>>> to
>>>>
>>>>     rsync -a --delete --progress -h -c -W "$chrootdir/root/" "$uniondir"
>>>>
>>>> <snip>
>>>
>>> You get a +1 from me for the idea.  But looking at the rsync line, I think
>>> that this will not work if I use makechrootpkg with "-- -i" to install a
>>> package then use it without "-c" to build on top of that?  I guess we should
>>> not do the rsync if "-c" is not specified.
>>
>> I'm fine with this approach. aufs was used originally (well, unionfs)
>> because it was a cheap way to say "don't break this chroot". Copying
>> is fine.
>>
>> BUT (there's always a but), some systems are size restricted. For
>> instance, slicehost slices have very limited disk space, so copying
>> the chroot to do this has potential to cause issues. I don't like
>> special case code for shitty systems, but perhaps we could keep both
>> aufs and rsync code in there, enabled by a command line switch? (-U
>> use a union (aufs) to keep chroot clean [DEPRECATED])
>
> How many people are building clean packages on a size-restricted
> system? I'm guessing this is an edge case where you might be one of
> the few exceptions.

Tis true, I was just pointing out that it COULD cause issues. For
instance, if you home partition is small and you're bittorrenting
8gigs of Friends episodes (like Dan does all the time), you might end
up running out and not being able to build until the torrent is done
and you move them to some other location.

It's definitely not a show stopper, but using rsync isn't without its
own problems