Tar output mode for installworld

[Eric Anderson]

On 07/15/07 16:20, Tim Kientzle wrote:
> Ulrich Spoerlein wrote:
>> On Sat, 14.07.2007 at 23:28:05 -0700, Tim Kientzle wrote:
>>
>>> #%ntree
>>> bin/echo uid=0 gid=0 group=wheel contents=my/bin/echo
>>>
>>> ... create a tarball with
>>>   tar -czf system.tgz @specification.ntree
>>> or install directly from the specification file using
>>>   tar -xvpf specification.ntree -C ${DESTDIR}
>> This would be the perfect basis on which to build a live/install release
>> CD. You boot it up ... [do] the fdisk/bsdlabel/gmirror/zfs stuff ...
>  > [and] then kick of the install through tar.
>> Simple and elegant. It would also do away with those base.aa, base.ab,
>> etc. madness.
> 
> I'm confused.  base.aa, etc, are a tar file, so I don't
> entirely understand how this would be different?  The
> current installer does the equivalent of
>    cat base.* | tar -xf -
> 
> I can see one advantage and one disadvantage of installing
> a specification file (which references other files) instead:
> 
> Plus:  The specification file can re-use the existing
> files on CD, so you don't have, e.g., one copy of /bin/sh
> on the live CD and another buried in base.tgz.  This
> could save space.
> 
> Minus:  Installing a specification file this way would
> be slower because you then have to read a lot of small
> files off of CD.
> 
> Or have I missed something?

Or, when the day comes that my tarfs implementation is in the tree and 
root booting enabled, you boot the tar file as the root fs, and use that 
same tar file to build the system too.  :)

Eric