<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 13:11, Liraz Siri <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:liraz@turnkeylinux.org">liraz@turnkeylinux.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">> Tim Hawkins wrote:<br>
><br>
> Perhaps the approach should be to create an application that allows you<br>
> to turn the data you have created on an appliance into a package, so you<br>
> can reinstall it ontop of another freshOS/appliance install when it<br>
> comes time to upgrade.<br>
<br>
</div>According to the policy, Debian packages don't touch user data. Lots of<br>
things depend on that and if you break the rule you'll get burned.<br></blockquote><div> </div><div>There's a distinction between "Debian packages don't touch user data" and "applications provided by Debian packages may touch user data". For example WebMin does that - as do cPanel and other control panel applications, not to mention many scripts that tune iptables fw & qos settings. (and I think we'd already agreed on that).<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im">
> If each appliance package came with a metadata file that described where<br>
> all the relevant user data is stored, or how to find it via the<br>
> appliances configuration, then such a tool could be feasible.<br>
<br>
</div>The suggested implementation is not the way to do it, but I like the<br>
idea of an automated tool that makes appliance development easier by<br>
packaging the changes a developer made on some sort of SDK appliance.<br>
Maybe eventually we can figure out how to get TurnKey to auto-generate<br>
reproducible deltas ...<br></blockquote><div> <br>I like the metadata idea. If the metadata format is flexible enough, it could be used to map settings that reside text files, specialized registry-like databases or XML files. And using it to generate deltas is a great idea too.<br>
<br></div></div>-- <br>Carlos Ribeiro<br>Consultoria em Projetos<br>twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/carribeiro">http://twitter.com/carribeiro</a><br>blog: <a href="http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com">http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com</a><br>
mail: <a href="mailto:carribeiro@gmail.com">carribeiro@gmail.com</a><br>