[Umlbuilder-devel] Upcoming release

[Roger B. <ro...@ro...>]

I hope to release a new version within a week or so.  A notable
addition is the addition of a miniroot (old SunOS users will recognise
the term).  This is a small Linux runtime in an ext2 filesystem.
The miniroot is used to build initial ramdisks, install modules and
can even resize and change the type of filesystems.  (The latter is
done using brute force - make a new file, mount in UML with the old one
and cpio the contents across).

The 2GB limit on filesystems has also gone.  All files are created
by a tiny external binary that creates them of the right size or
the largest supported size of the filesystem.

Lots of other little fixes which I will list when doing the actual
release.

I have also been having two trains of thought which I'll investigate
further.  Any feedback is welcome.

The first is that since I already have the rpmindex.py files generated
on my system, I can include them with the UML Builder distribution and
so most people won't need to generate them themselves.  This can also
be taken further and allow for using the original distro CDs and
hence no need for copying the RPMs off first.

The second thought is to dump UML Builder completely and use an installer
that has been appropriated from a standard Linux distribution, and then
build
its config files.  Now that UML itself supports partitioning, most of the
installers should work with some hacking.  The only one I have looked at
so far is DrakX which is the Mandrake one.  See
http://cvs.mandrakesoft.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/gi/
Unfortunately most of it is in Perl, and I have no intention of writing
any Perl code beyond a few lines now and then.

See also http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/log/e_clig.shtml

Roger