I recently outlined the simplest example of my ongoing pursuit of trivially self-replicating (and modifying) livecd distributions. I.e. the goal of having an fc8 installable blu-ray(whatever) which also behaves as a livecd, which can regenerate itself with arbitrary modifications via simple 1-click/simple user interface. Going further down this line of thought, takes me to this outline for the ultimate fedora8 development distribution livedvd image- In addition to the above features, the livedvd environment should- 1) have a full copy of the source repo (src rpms). 1B) It would be better to also have a full copy of the cvs/svn/git/whatever repository that builds the srcrpms repo from network upstream sources (presumably via 1click/commandline non-interactive interface) 2) have a version of pungi or whatever that non-interactively inputs (1) and outputs the full binary repository. 2B) with an option for using qemu-ppc to generate even the other binary repositories (after quite a bit of unattended gratuitous power consumption) 3) a tool like pilgrim or what I'm working on that inputs (2) and outputs an installable livedvd image. I.e. the environment you are using to build this new modified version. 4) now here is where I'm really asking for a lot: Now that you have every line of source code on this self replicating dvd, I would also like to see a database where literally every bit(/line of source code) on the dvd is associated with a maintainer/upstream-maintainer. Such that at any point any developer (or bright kid) with sufficient skill, can dig into any bug they find, down to the relevent lines of source, and then trivially get that information and/or patch to the correct upstream owner. 5) As I've been harping all for some time, you also want the feature to virtually run new output livedvds (in qemu/etc). 6) what (5) is really for, is to facilitate fully automated regression tests. In addition to being self-reproducable and self-debuggable, they should be viciously self-testing as well. 7) the reason that all of this hasn't been done so far, is (a) its quite complicated tying a lot of this together. but imho this is just a level of maturity that fedora just hasn't achieved yet, but its getting close. and (b) on current hardware this is maybe a runtime of a week or more. But this is where you also want to bring in the tools to trivially allow this livedvd to boot an entire cluster of xbox's on a lan, and give you trivial 1-button interface to rebuild/reproduce all in such a distributed system. Likewise, this may just take 30 minutes to run on a middle-class laptop 10 years from now, and can be the official new 'order a pizza' step in the compile your own kernel(&now distro) howto. -dmc/jdog ____________________________________________________________________________________ Have a burning question? Go to www.Answers.yahoo.com and get answers from real people who know. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
