[arch-releng] Quick ISO building HOWTO

[Dieter Plaetinck]

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:40:01 -0600
Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 4:29 AM, Dieter Plaetinck
> <dieter at plaetinck.be> wrote:
> > Aaron/Gerhard, can you share with us exactly how you build the
> > iso's? So everyone can do it...
> > (I would like to document this on the wiki too, I couldn't find a
> > tutorial/wiki page/manpage)
> >
> > What I have:
> > * git clone git://projects.archlinux.org/archiso.git
> > * cd archiso/archiso
> > * sudo make install
> > (all of this to be replaced with 'pacman -Sy archiso' when a new
> > archiso release is done, which is planned after 2009-01 release)
> >
> > cd ../configs/install-iso
> > sudo make all-iso (or ftp-iso, or core-iso)
> 
> Correct!
> 
> > questions:
> > 1) any specific requirements on /etc/pacman.conf? (related to
> > settings/available repos?)
> > 2) how do you build iso's with only core or with core+testing
> > available? by just (un)commenting testing from /etc/pacman.conf?
> 
> mkarchiso uses your system's pacman.conf, so whatever is enabled there
> is enabled in the ISO. To build official ISOs we should disable
> testing before building.

Ok, so we enable testing in /etc/pacman.conf to build alpha/beta isos
with the new kernel etc, then after testing etc, we get everything we
need from testing into core, and build iso's with core only.

> 
> > 3) assuming that the relevant repositories are frozen, if I build
> > an iso on my system, and someone else builds the iso on his system,
> > will the iso's match perfectly? (eg same md5sums)
> 
> Well, the md5sums probably won't match. I imagine something injects
> dates or something of the sort - tar does, I know.
> 
> > I think it would be useful in the future we build locally first and
> > test it, and then instead of uploading to gerolde, we can just
> > rebuild it there?
> 
> Testing is always preferred. Part of the reason I have been uploading
> them without testing is simply that I have little time at home. It is
> easy for me to ssh and run "make all" and then scp them, so others can
> test, but it's hard for me to test remotely.

Of course.  What I meant is just: instead of building locally and then
uploading, we could rebuild on gerolde and assume the iso over there
if the same as the one built locally (if we pay very close attention
to /etc/pacman.conf). I don't know what kind of connections you have,
but for me to upload several hundreds of MB would take a loong time. (my
upload is somewhere around 10-50kB/s)

This does not mean any change in testing procedures.