[xen-tools-discuss] New way to generate sources.list planned for one of the next xen-tools releases. Would like to hear some comments.

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

while going through the bugs reported against xen-tools in Debian and
Ubuntu, I noticed several bugs which point to the same general problem
with sources.list generation:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xen-tools/+bug/309750
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xen-tools/+bug/260137

Main point is that until now the sources.list generation is only based
on what the Dom0's sources.list uses. This may often be the right
thing, but isn't very controllable.

So my idea is to expand the --dist option to accept a parameter syntax
which allows to fine-grain what will be in the sources.list of the
DomU.

It should offer the possibility to enabled/disable
security/volatile/backports as well as
contrib/non-free/universe/restricted/multiverse for each of them.

My current idea is to allow parameters like

--dist="lenny:main+src,contrib,non-free;security+src;volatile:main"

to e.g. install lenny including contrib and non-free as well as
security, but only main from volatile.

And maybe (*) to also allow the syntax of

--dist="lenny;no-security"

(*) In case of the default will be to include security which is
    probably the most often case or xen-tools continues to base that
    decision of security or no security on the contents of Dom0's
    sources.list -- that works now even if we install Debian in the
    DomU and the Dom0 is Ubuntu (as well as vice versa).

The syntax can be described as follows:

First and only mandatory element is the distribution to install

Further elements are separated by a semicolon and may be security,
volatile, backports, etc. (basically anything which goes on its own
deb line).

It may have appended "+src" to enable the corresponding deb-src line,
too, or "-src" to enable only the deb-src line. (Is this too
confusing?)

Elements may have a colon and comma-delimited subelements following
which may have values like main, contrib, non-free, universe,
restricted, multiverse, etc.

Again the subelements may have appended "+src" to enable the them also
in corresponding deb-src line, too, or "-src" to enable them only in
the deb-src line.

Any comments or further ideas about that? Will probably start to
implement that soon. :-)

		Regards, Axel
-- 
Axel Beckert - abe at deuxchevaux.org, abe at noone.org - http://noone.org/abe/