hello,

  first, thanks for the quick responses


[snip]

> > 
> >   I'd like to hear about approaches other people (would) 
> use - thanks
> > 
> > Stephan

[snip]

> You probably want makefs(8) to create ISO 9660 file systems:
> 
>	<http://www.netbsd.org/contrib/projects.html#iso9660>
>
>Maybe a "Summer of Code" project will make this happen...
>
>BTW, you can specify uid, gid, mode etc. of files while writing 
>file archives using pax(1). See the `-M' option to pax.

  yes, after reading closer the manpages of pax for it's option 
'-M specfile', makefs for it's option '-F specfile' and mtree
in general, my desire is to have sth. like "mkisofs integrated 
into the makefs framework" - you named it...


[snip]

> Can you set the uid/gid and permission bits when the software is
> installed on to the target system from your distribution media? This
> would require being root anyway.

  sure, for a one-shot
  but it is not practical to have a real target device integrated into 
the the toolchain just for packing filesystem images
  we try to integrate also the packing step into the everyday-toolchain-
automating-script infrastructure - the current approach is to work with 
sudo, but sudo usage is sprouting like weed 'n I want to cut that  :-)

  finally I prefer to have the files on the CD directly as a reference,
instead of doing, say, an mtree processing afterwards

Stephan