Re: release directories and naming for install images, live images, and isos

[Alan Barrett <apb%cequrux.com@localhost>]

On Fri, 16 Mar 2012, Jeff Rizzo wrote:
> To make things a bit better organized, I propose to make the 
> following changes:
>
> - name images a more descriptive name. 
> ("NetBSD-6.99.4-amd64-inst.img.gz", for example)

Good.  The "inst" part of your example might need to be longer, to
encode things like whether or not it contains an installer, whether or
not it's usable as a "live" rescue image, whether or not it contains set
files, ...  Some thought should also be given to the naming of
multi-architecture images.

> - install images and ISOs in $RELEASEDIR/images, to keep them in 
> a single place.
> - create a symlink $RELEASEDIR/images -> $RELEASEDIR/iso so 
> people used to looking for ISOs don't get lost

I like moving from "iso" to "images".  I don't like the 
inconsistency between "iso" at this level and "cdrom" under 
RELEASEDIR/${MACHINE}/installation, and changing to "images would 
resolve that.  If we must have a symlink then I think it should be 
"iso -> images", not "images -> iso".

We currently store small images in 
RELEASEDIR/${MACHINE}/installation/{cdrom,floppy,...}, and large 
images in RELEASEDIR/iso.  I think it's useful to store small and 
large images in different places, because small images may be 
embedded inside large images.  ("small" means "not including set 
files", and "large" means "including set files".)  It's not clear 
to me whether you propose to change this.

release(7) doesn't say where the outputs from build.sh 
live-image and install-image will go, but src/BUILDING says 
RELEASEDIR/liveimage and RELEASEDIR/installimage.  I'd suggest 
moving them to RELEASEDIR/images too, changing the names to fit in 
with the new convention, and documenting this properly.

> - create symlinks for ISOs and images into 
> $RELEASEMACHINEDIR/installation/cdrom and install-image 
> $RELEASEMACHINEDIR/installation/respectively

Please could you clarify exactly what symlinks you propose to add. 
I don't understant either which direction the symlinks would go or 
which files or images would have links.

--apb (Alan Barrett)