Need some space

[Chris Ball]

Hi,

   > Is there a reason why we can't have a single image? AFAICT
   > there's a couple of extra kernel modules and an extra xserver
   > package and most of the rest of it should be the same between the
   > XO-1 and XO-1.5.

Several reasons:

   * The XO-1 NAND requires jffs2 to be used, and the XO-1.5 has
     different storage hardware and is probably going to use ext[24].
     So, it would not be possible to share a single image file,
     although you could share a single build tree.

   * We're going to use much more space (i.e. install more packages)
     for the 4GB XO-1.5 image.

   * The machines need to boot different kernels, as they run on
     different subarchitectures.  However, we can imagine an olpc.fth
     script that works out which model it's running on and loads an
     appropriately-named kernel, and then having both kernels in the
     image.  I don't think there's anything else in the way that can't
     be worked around like this, but I might be wrong.

So, I think you could have a minimal (in terms of disk space) build
tree that worked on both machines, but that people running XO-1.5
would probably not prefer it to their native image, because they'd
rather use the larger image instead.  As a result, I don't see that
we're gaining much from sharing a build tree, so I'm not strongly
convinced that there's merit in doing more than just keeping the
kickstart files close to each other.  (But if someone else wants
to set something like this up, I won't argue against it.)

Thanks,

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb at laptop.org>