Reduce "Core" to 1 Binary CD? -- WAS: Request for Packages in Fedora Core 3

[Elliott Wilcoxon]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:

  > And I'm also somewhat concerned that whatever mechanism is created to
> tie in Extras into the install/upgrade proces...that mechnism needs to
> be general enough to encompass 3rd party repos too. No hardwiring of
> extras into the default logic of firstboot or anaconda. No a priori
> knowledge of the groupings to expect on the extra cds, things like
> that. Whatever works with extras needs to work with things like
> intranet or 3rd party addon media, in a general way...including
> defined package groups outside of Core comps definition.
> 
> 
> -jef
> 

Would the following scenario be possible?  FC(n+1) is released, small 
Core, large Extras.  Apt/yum repos go up with the new stuff.  People who 
want to upgrade download a program (or have it installed already; the 
features could be added to up2date/system-config-packages/synaptic), and 
run it.  It opens a window with various options.  If they want to just 
upgrade to the next version, they press that button, and their rpm 
headers are extracted from their rpm database.  This information is 
compared to the Extras repo, and all packages needed for upgrading to 
FC(n+1) are downloaded, then packed into the correct number of .iso's. 
They burn these .iso's, along with the Core .iso, and go along to their 
upgrade.  The idea is that we can just use the yum/apt package managers 
to determine which rpm's to download, then how they should be placed on 
the CD's to satisfy dependencies in a simple CD1->CD2->CD3->done manner.

In addition to the 'just upgrade' option, a custom .iso feature should 
also be present, for clean installs on machines with different 
configurations than the one you're doing the downloading on.  Ideally, 
simple and advanced paths would be available.  Simple would look like 
anaconda's software selector, with broad groups of software.  Advanced 
would look more like synaptic, with individual packages, with automatic 
dependency handling as you mark packages for inclusion on the .iso's.

Elliott Wilcoxon