DLoop comments

[Phillip Susi]

Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> 
> You and I are clearly working from different definitions of "trivial".
> There is a lot more to installing a .deb than placing each file at a certain
> path.  I don't see much point in arguing this, though; you can trivially
> prove me wrong by implementing it and showing us how well it works. :-)
> 

Yes, there is more to installing a .deb than extracting the files, but 
one part of installing the .deb is extracting the files, so when you do 
so, if you remove the files from the .deb and leave everything else, 
then you can reinstall it later by getting the files from their already 
installed locations, and processing everything else needed to install 
the package normally, which is still contained in the package.

> 
> Copying the installed filesystem is very fast.  Much, much faster than
> installing .debs.
> 
> 

This is true.

  >
> It actually isn't if, you think about it.  Consider that the current
> approach gets the user up and running immediately and lets them use the
> system while they wait (potentially hours) for updates to download, rather
> than delaying the entire installation while waiting for them.
> 
> 

This is also true.

>>How so?  The configuration used on the livecd might fail when you try to 
>>boot from the hard disk.
> 
> 
> No, it won't.  Why do you think it would?
> 
> 
>>The configuration of a freshly installed package might need to be modified
>>to work on the cd, but when you install to the hard drive, you want the
>>freshly installed configuration.
> 
> 
> This is never true with an Ubuntu live CD.  It is specifically designed to
> work with a standard, pristine filesystem.
> 
> 
>>I guess you could make a script to revert such configurations when doing 
>>the copy, but it seems like that would be harder to maintain than simply 
>>installing the packages like normal, and letting them configure 
>>themselves when unpacked, the way the installer does now.
> 
> 
> The pristine system is always available on the CD and could be copied
> instead.  I'm undecided about copying the configured system vs. copying the
> pristine system and then configuring it again, though I'm leaning toward the
> former.  There's actually a very minimal amount of livecd-specific
> configuration done at runtime, and it would be very simple to roll back.
> 

What I meant by this line of discussion is that you may not build a 
livedc filesystem with pristine installations of the packages, you may 
need to configure them a bit after they are installed.  Such 
configuration may be different on the livecd than on the hard drive.

It is really just a potential problem that I thought might come up with 
copying the files when I decided that the reason the livecd doesn't 
simply have an option to copy all the files to the hard drive already 
must be because it isn't that simple.

You have convinced me though, that copying is probably the best thing to 
do.  Of course, if any configuration problems DO crop up that would make 
installing from the debs desirable again, then I think my idea is still 
a good one.

Also one of the reasons I thought of this was because the DLoop Wiki 
seems to go to great lengths trying to come up with ways to save space 
on the livecd yet still be able to install from the .debs.  I assumed 
there was a good reason to want to install from the .debs.