> Euhm, you serious expect the installer to be able to compile itself > during an install? > > Wichert. > umm, no, looks like I said something confusing.
I'm talking about the installer's build system, not the actual install. A bit more elaboration: Currently : boot-floppies - when we are creating the _install_ root filesystem we apt-get a bunch of binary packages, extract them into a temporary area, remove stuff we don't want, do library reduction etc.. Some of the packages that we grab are special *-bf packages, smaller versions built specifically for boot floppies. _no one_ else uses them except for people buliding boot-floppies. debian-installer - we apt-get a bunch of .udebs, then build our little fs. _no one_ else uses them except for people building debian-installer. Proposed: Both systems grab source pacakages during the build, rather than binaries. embedded is put into DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS, and the packages are compiled small, fit for boot-floppies or debian-installer. We then take those generated binary packages and build our install disk. -David
