Methods for Improving Build Tools

[Michael Stone]

Dear devel,

I just noticed a post [1] describing the contortions that Sulochan and
Bryan had to go through in order to get a 1-shot flashable build
containing their desired software.  They represent the second group who
has wrestled with copy-nand in the past three weeks. 

In my opinion, this situation is ludicrous. These individuals are trying
to help themselves and our platform by making their own builds based on
our software and they are are cutting themselves to pieces on all the
rough edges of the existing tools. 

In response, I say: if you've fought with these tools and come away
frustrated, help improve them! Help with Puritan [2], try writing a
KickStart file for an OLPC build [3], or write a "clean-my-image" script
that will take copy-nand images and remove unwanted changes made by
booting the image. Alternately, improve the "Mounting JFFS2 images" [4]
instructions to allow image rewriting on regular linux systems.

In other words, this is an area with low-hanging fruit and some of you
ought to be shaking the tree!

Michael

[1]: http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/183
[2]: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Puritan 
[3]: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/LiveCDHowTo
[4]: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Mounting_jffs2_images