An 'early' morning thought about the future of PWL

[Adi Linden]

I thought about ways to automate the sources for PeeWeeLinux. Here's an
idea I had while showering this morning. Right up front, to implement it
it would require sophisticated knowledge of rpm. Something I don't have
but nonetheless its an idea I'd like to share...

First PeeWeeLinux would have to build from RedHat source rpms. Packages
that do not exist as source rpm would have to be created specifically for
PeeWeeLinux or for Redhat Linux in gerneral.

First take the original source rpm and manually edit the spec file to
build a rpm suitable for PWL. Also, edit the sources to compile as
required for PWL. I.e. the libs to use, which files to install, etc. 
Create a patch file to patch the necessary changes into the source rpm
files.

Build a PWL specific rpm from the patches source rpm.

Use a defined mount point for the PeeWeeLinux filesystem being build
independed of where PeeWeeLinux has been extracted to. I.e. /mnt/PWL.

Use rpm in a similar mode as the RedHat install disks do. That is install
the PWL specific rpms in /mnt/PWL rather than the current file system.

This would eliminate the use of tar to manage files. The pwlconfig script
would have to do the following steps to build a project:

1. Menu to select which packages to build and install
2. Submenu to select which files to install from the packages
3. Configure the location of RH source rpms and source rpm that do not
come with RH
4. Patch the RH source rpms to turn them into PWL source rpms
5. Build the PWL specific rpms from source rpms
6. Condition the /mnt/PWL filesystem for the new system
7. Install the selected files from PWL rpms in /mnt/PWL
8. Install any custom config files into /mnt/PWL, overwriting any existing
configuration
8. Offer choice of what to do with the newly created system, i.e. build a
ramdisk, load a DOC, make a bootable CD...

The advantages I can see:
- The PWL distribution would no longer require any sources but only patch
files containing package description, help information (things that could
be displayed by pwlconfig) and the actual patch to the RH source rpm.
- Perhaps eases the migration to newer RH versions as they are released.

The disadvantages:
- Building an initial PWL development environment could be 'very' time
consuming and diskspace consuming since everything has to be compiled
first.
- Defenitely RH specific!

I guess an option would be to have a package of pre-compiled PWL rpms
available. That would make PWL a 'real' full-fledged distro for embedded
stuff :)

Perhaps I should get and dig into 'Maxximum RPM' sometime. Maybe that
would be a ToDo wishlist item for the next RedHat release, when a few
package for PWL will have to be re-done...

TTYL,
Adi (dreaming... :)