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Hey, |
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|
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This week has been excellent in terms of progress. The Gearman |
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worker/client is now complete, and can be used to queue builds. I've |
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tested this setup on a few different machines and it seems pretty |
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solid as long as you configure the paths correctly. Also, as part of |
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this, builds will now isolate all their activity into a single |
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directory. It's not chrooted as such, like I said in my previous |
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progress report, because the use of binaries from the host is |
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required. I'm not entirely sure chrooting makes any sense after giving |
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it some more thought, because they'd still be root and they could |
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break back out of the chroot anyway. However, all input to this tool |
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is heavily sanitised before it reaches Gearman, so the potential |
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threats should be dealt with before they even reach the build tool. |
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|
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So that's everything checked off what I said I'd be doing this week. |
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How much did I actually get done though? A whole lot more. I've |
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started and then made huge progress with my WebUI, and it's producing |
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working builds right now, however the interfaces are still quite rough |
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and need improvement still. Rather than try to explain what I've done, |
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check out the screencaps on my blog here: |
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http://hexxeh.net/?p=328117737 |
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|
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For a minimal image, the whole process from the welcome screen to |
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being booted into your image takes around 2 minutes. Some things are |
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still missing, some obvious to see, some not so obvious. The selection |
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options on the Locale screen are currently hardcoded, these have to be |
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loaded from a Stage3 or a preprepared list kept with the Stage3. The |
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Packages screen could use improvement to make package selection user |
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friendly, including the option of some commonly used predefined sets |
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of packages a user can pick to get for example a desktop environment |
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with a word processor up and running quickly. Also, some of the |
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customisation options are still missing. USE flags selection and |
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keywords to name a couple. The UI also needs general polish and extra |
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help messages to make it more user friendly. These are this weeks |
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tasks: |
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|
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- Load timezones from Stage3/external list |
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- Load keyboard layouts from Stage3/external list |
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- Look into supporting more languages |
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- Add the rest of the customisation options in an expert mode of the wizard |
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|
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I'm also hoping to add extra security measures on the WebUI the |
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following week in preparation for getting a public copy up and |
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running. I've ordered servers this week to power a large installation |
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of the system and so I should have no problems letting everyone try it |
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out once it's ready, no download/setup required. So that's my summary |
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of the past week, well ahead of schedule, going very well indeed. |
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|
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Cheers, |
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Liam |