As sarge is done and the unofficial amd64 release is just waiting on the fat lady, it's time to start talking in detail about plans for debian-cd. There's a plan for a debian-cd hack session the day before Debconf starts (Saturday 9th July), and I'm sure we'll have some more ideas then.

Initial plans - check in and sync up

For now my immediate plans are:

 * Add the JTE patch into cdrtools properly, to build a mkisofs-jte
   package that we can depend on. I didn't want to do this earlier,
   but several weeks of testing has convinced me that the JTE patch is
   stable enough to package. I'm thinking of having a mkisofs-jte
   package for now, then merging it into the main mkisofs package
   later. Sound reasonable?

 * Merge the JTE support into mainline debian-cd. Again, it worked
   fine for the sarge ["CDs"] and we no longer have to care about breaking
   woody builds.

 * Call for everybody to merge all their outstanding changes in.

 * Once the above are done, freeze debian-cd in CVS and move to a more
   powerful scm (svn/arch/whatever - I'm open to suggestions/debate
   here).

Later - big changes

After that, it'll be easier to start work on the more intrusive changes I'd like to make:

 * Fix task generation; remove the generated task lists from the
   module altogether and make the build generate them each time. I
   know Joey's been wanting this for a while, and it's sensible

 * Rip out and rewrite the CD-filling code. Rather than estimate at
   the beginning of the run what will fit on each CD (which can lead
   to iterative builds to get sizes right), check on sizes as files
   are copied in at the end of the process.

 * (Related) Stop using apt-ftparchive. This is now one of the most
   time-consuming steps in a CD build, and is unnecessary. Instead, it
   should be possible to parse the Packages and Sources files that we
   have to start with. Then, generate Packages and Sources files for
   the ["CDs"] as we copy the relevant files into the temporary tree.

 * Full support for multi-arch ["CDs"]. As we copy .debs into the
   temporary trees, copy the files in for all the arches
   specified. It's even possible to make ["CDs"] and ["DVDs"] boot on several
   arches in parallel (cool hack! :-) ). Also, have an option for
   building ["CDs"] including the source (in the same way), to make it
   easier for people to distribute small sets of ["CDs"] and __know__ that
   they're covered for source liability.

 * Allow (limited) builds without a local mirror. Netinst and business
   card images should be possible that way - they don't need a full
   set of packages to be present.

DebianCdToDo

Initial plans - check in and sync up

Later - big changes