Clarity wrote: Tue Mar 14, 2023 4:32 am
As I agree, I would not reference WoofCE as some builder that encloses "Bloat" as I dont feel it an good reference in all of what WoofCE and GIT, together, does for developers and builders.
I'm not saying woof-CE is particularly huge from an overall point of view (woof-CE downloaded is currently in the ten(s) of MiB range uncompressed - not sure myself of the exact size since I haven't downloaded it for years), but that's kind of large to include in the iso if someone is trying to make as small a downloadable iso as possible. But doesn't matter at all that the woof-CE build system used to build Puppy Linux isn't included in any Puppy Linux iso by default - it is easy enough to fetch that (or they can make builds online using Github Actions) if someone really wants to try using it.
All I was saying is that I can however easily include FirstRib build scripts, as a definite convenience, because they only take up around 62 KiB, which is irrelevant in terms of bloating the overall downloadable iso size. If that FirstRib build system was more than a few MB in size I wouldn't include any of it in the iso, because that would be bloat from the point of view of keeping the iso small... Since the FR build scripts are small and relatively simple, they are easy to read, understand, and modify for changed or added functionality by anyone with reasonable scripting/Linux admin skills; hence it being worthwhile to me including them in the iso by default.
Anyway, it is relatively simple and tiny at the same time. Why is FR build system so small you might wonder? Well, FirstRib is basically centred around its relatively small but flexible initrd design - the rest of the system on purpose utilizes not only the repos of upstream distros but also their official package managers. Hence all firstrib needs as a build component extra is a script (including plugin) that simply uses the official package manager to build the underlying root filesystem (plus some scripting skills, by the likes of @rockedge, or myself or whoever, to do any needed additional configuration work), which also has the advantage that the result is not only fully upstream distro compatible but therefore also full multi-user capable. We have the upstream distro designers to thank for that, not ourselves. It is a simple idea based on busybox + official package manager (specially for KLV case), but per the KL results is shown to work very well in practice.
Aside from now building a few such distros, the only main work I myself really do, is develop that FirstRib initrd (including making it support the likes of Ventoy); that work is a bit complex and I have to be careful any time I change any part of that code not to break any of the quite intricately connected w_changes, w_bootfrom UUID|LABEL blah blah blah, w_altNN, w_copy2ram, and so on, flexible functionality involved for different install type uses ..., which is why I sometimes resist making too many changes to it. What works, I feel for my sanity, is best overall left alone...!... but fortunately the inner-code design/arrangement makes it not overly difficult to add new functionality in a logical manner without any spaghetti code workaround hacks or I would have completely broken it long ago. Despite the extra functionality added over time, the FR initrd remains very small and probably not slowed down at all - I am more relieved about that than ever was confident about making the changes without destroying the whole thing... I consider the hand of luck (and brain-hurting concentration) somehow helped. I prefer now to sit back and just use it and have no internal desire to add more at present...
The biggest fun I personally have had was with 'weedogit', which effectively showed how useful the FR initrd ended up miraculously being. It was forum member @Duprate who first referred to it as a magic initrd (I appreciated his nice comments of course). For me, however, it is somewhat miraculous that it actually worked per my plans, hopes, and design - that maybe-lucky-fluke is the magic in it from my point of view. Some accuse me of 'boasting' (though why shouldn't I exactly?), and I'm called a 'tool' or 'nasty individual' or whatever, but actually I am not so much ever boasting but rather 'counting my blessings and good fortune' albeit in the least religious of ways... At this current 'end of the day' it 'works' and these KL distros are a continuing demonstration of that, so I enjoy the fruits of my own labour and the very much appreciated help of others that have contributed so much in overall distro design and production based on that FR initrd and the associated build scripts.
Git as a resource is a separate matter altogether of course. Nothing to do, per se, with woof-CE or FirstRib or whatever - just a useful version control system that any such project can use (and do).