[arch-releng] dual arch CDs [was: A TODO draft for next installation media]

[Aaron Griffin]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 6:55 AM, Dieter Plaetinck <dieter at plaetinck.be> wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:04:15 +0100
> Thomas Bächler <thomas at archlinux.org> wrote:
>
>> Am 18.02.2010 00:13, schrieb Aaron Griffin:
>> > There is a report on it, but I don't know it offhand. The current
>> > idea I had was that we simply do all the massaging in the archiso
>> > hooks. That is, we create one CD with two different base images and
>> > two kernels. The menu items would indicate i686 or x86_64 kernels,
>> > and would choose the right aufs image for that architecture.
>> >
>> > Yes, this effectively doubles the size of these CDs, but I'm not too
>> > sure I want to ship the dual arch CDs regularly. What do you guys
>> > think?
>> >
>>
>> For FrOSCon 2009, I created the CD by hand: I took initramfs images
>> from both CDs (removed the legacy-ide one because space wasn't
>> enough) and all squashfs images, manipulated isomounts and grub
>> manually. I didn't need to modify anything but isomounts and grub for
>> it to work!
>
> I also find it better to keep as much the same and only
> differentiate where necessary (on a "higher level")
> the more stuff that both arches can share, the better.
>
>> We should put -any packages into a separate squashfs to save some
>> space, although I suspect with the addition of the lts kernel to
>> core, it won't fit anymore.
>
> Either way, this approach should be more space efficient then Aarons
> proposal, right?

Well... there's always the option of changing the kernel, but only use
the 32bit userspace. I mean, all we really want is the installed
system to vary, not the live one.