[arch-releng] Providing meta information for iso releases

[Pierre Schmitz]

Hi engineers,

while working on my archportal project I wondered if it wouldn't be
nice to have some meta information about our install images. The purpose
of this would be automaticall generating the download page, README
files, atom feeds etc.. What do you think about this idea in general?

1) Which information could we provide?
* release date/time
* release name
* kernel version
* changelog
* maybe some readme/instructions
* for each iso image:
  * file name
  * short description (e.g. netinstall iso image)
  * description
  * architectures (e.g. arch=(i686 x86_64)
  * size
  * checksums (md5, sha1)
  * signature (when package signing available)

2) Which format to use?
The easiest was is probably to create something similar to the db files
for packages. That means several text files and directories within a tar
file. For example some file with common information about this release
in the root dir and specific information for each iso within subdir
named like the iso file names.

3) How to create it?
We'll need a simple way to create these db files automatically with
every release. All information except descriptions can be filled in
automatically.

So what do you guys think about this?

Greetings,

Pierre

-- 
Pierre Schmitz, https://users.archlinux.de/~pierre