At hackmeeting we had some good chat about sharing more work between
freepto&tails (and, if possible, any other distribution). I'll be
sketchy here.
Low-hanging fruits are good to enjoy the benefits of sharing things
without getting into too much complicated projects. Packaging small
shell scripts or simple parts of the distribution is probably a good
example of that. For example, we'd like to package the "random nick
chooser".
We also talked about how to share "hooks" or other parts of live-build
process, and our conclusion was that there is no simple way to do that,
and it isn't that much important, since they're typically very short and
simple scripts.
On configurations
=================
Iceweasel
---------
We observed that preconfiguring applications can be ugly, and tried to
see what we could do about that. The most problematic seems to be
mozilla's one, since their complex configuration, multiple databases,
embedded plugins can make that a nightmare. We decided not to write any
wrapper script to create configurations: it would add complexity without
making the configurations process considerably simpler.
Freepto has one binary extension (Disconnect) and will try to get that
into debian: RFP are cool!
SQL files should be transformed into SQL scripts.
Mumble
------
mumble has a sqlite-based configuration; instead of copying the sqlite
file, it's better to create it with a script
TorBrowser: TBB and TBL
=======================
We discussed the benefits and cons of having a "launcher" (TBL) instead
of the whole TBB inside the image. Of course putting it inside will
ensure shorter 'opening' times; this is especially true for live
systems.
We ended up saying that having the TBL pre-downloading
the TBB during image building (with a chroot-hook) would be the best
solution. Boyska volounteered on that: this would require something like
torbrowser-launcher --batch-download
To make TBL more robust, we also need to get in touch with TBB
sysadmins, to ensure a sane way of getting the latest browser and
signature.
Unit testing
============
Unit tests are cool, tails has, and freepto wants them, too! We also
would benefit from running daily builds which (in case of error) will
send notification email: this will ensure that no change in debian is
breaking the build.
Hosting
=======
We don't like github, so we need to find a better hosting. This could
require a different organization.
Boot
====
persistence-media
-----------------
persistence-media=removable-usb is not very reliable: it will not work
on some usb sticks (sandisk). The proposed way of doing this is using a
syslinux hook to append a cmdline parameter that clarifies which disk
we're in to the initramfs (which does not have udisk to inspect it).
Then, we should change live-boot method of filtering devices.
Intrigeri is working on the first part (changing syslinux), while boyska
will work on the live-boot part.
EFI
---
... but freepto has TWO boot loaders (grub for EFI). We decided to move
everything to syslinux. This will bring us:
* less maintainance
* more similar to tails
* cleaner (.efi images are inside git code, right now!)
* support for the persistence-media hack explained above.
I think that's all, I surely forgot something, but it's anyway a lot of
stuff. Cheers!
--
boyska
