On Sun, 29 Oct 2006, Julio M. Merino Vidal wrote:
> Now, the problem is that the boot-big.fs image is already at its limit
> and it cannot grow any more because it'd not fit a 2.8MB floppy disk.
> But as the Makefiles say, NetBSD cannot write such disks.  Given that
> we already have the boot iso images (which replace boot-big.fs),
> someone mentioned that boot-big.fs shall be removed.  And, for
> simplicity, this is what I've done (well, not really yet).
>
> See the attached patch.
>
> What do you people think?

I'm only interested in the second change ("boot-big.fs shall be removed") 
but couldn't find that in your patch - maybe split this into two seperate 
topics?

As for how to handle this: I think it's fine to nuke 
src/distrib/i386/floppies/bootfloppy-big and use what 
src/distrib/i386/cdroms/bootcd offers, but please be aware that there's 
the "iso-image" target in src/etc/Makefile (and esp. 
src/etc/etc.*/Makefile.inc) that may still reference this: This is another 
can of worm that needs fixing somehow in the not-so-long run... maybe just 
disable it for i386 and amd64 for now, and point the iso-image target at 
the bootable CDs made for now.

In the long run, the build process needs to be split up better, to allow 
building an install-CD after the install-sets were built - this is 
currently not doable!

(An easy way to have a install-CD already today is by setting 
CDRELEASE=true in the CD Makefiles... I guess I'll commit examples for 
i386 and amd now, really - have a look at 
src/distrib/i386/cdrom/installcd; it requires 'build.sh release' being 
done)

To migrate more CDs from the mkisofs-kludge (= src/etc/Makefile's 
iso-image target), more work on makefs(8) needs to be done:

XXX 1) The implementation of this is rather cludgy (copying sets around),
        as our makefs(8) can't put files from multiple directories into
        one image -- something that mkisofs can do with 'graft' points
XXX 2) This should be run after 'build.sh release' - It would be nice
        if we had a seperate stage to add such hooks in our build framework


  - Hubert