On Mon, 27 Feb 2017 19:37:31 +0100, Peter Robinson pbrobinson@gmail.com wrote:
= Proposed Self Contained Change: Arm Support In FMW = https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/ArmSupportInFmw
Change owner(s):
- Martin Bříza <mbriza AT redhat DOT com>
Fedora Media Writer will gain the ability to write ARM images to SD cards and other portable media.
== Detailed Description == With ARM (ARMv7A) being one of the primary architectures of Fedora, we should support writing the images to bootable media for devices with this architecture.
This means Fedora Media Writer will have to list the ARM images, offer their download and be able to unpack them reliably (as they're shipped LZMA-compressed - .xz). Memory card support should be improved, especially in terms of reading drive information - many SD card drivers report wrong names, sizes and media presence.
This will come along with many more features in FMW, such as fullscreen screenshot preview, automatic FMW update check on Windows and Mac, better reliability and performance improvements.
== Scope ==
- Proposal owners:
Implementation of this Change
- Other developers:
N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Release engineering:
N/A
- List of deliverables:
N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Policies and guidelines:
N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Trademark approval:
N/A (not needed for this Change)
So this is another case where the 'system-wide' / 'self-contained' split doesn't really work. This doesn't affect the functioning of anyone's existing installed system, but it clearly has implications for the wider project: if this becomes the 'official' delivery mechanism for ARM users, that'll require changes to the download pages. And while the Change page says " How To Test - N/A (not a System Wide Change)", clearly this *will* need testing, especially before we make it the primary delivery mechanism.
Yeah, you're right. I'm intending this as a smaller change that will just make this functionality available. However, I don't mean to push this as a primary way how to ship Fedora ARM images - there are some specifics that the tool won't handle before F26 (and maybe ever), like resizing the partitions after writing it and maybe some hardware-specific cases. Regarding the test cases, these will be necessary, yes. I'm going to add them as an optional part of the FMW verification matrix.
It would be nice if you also engaged with myself or the ARM SIG in general too from both an implementation details PoV and a QA.
Peter
Resending this to the ARM list too. From the implementation standpoint, this change is basically just about listing Fedora ARMv7 images in the list of available Fedora variants and also adding LZMA on-the-fly decompression for the raw images provided by fedora download mirrors. Please let me know if there are other features you'd like to have implemented. Please also note FMW is a multiplatform tool so adding things like partition layout changes on Windows (especially) and Mac would be a pretty challenging task for now - these would probably have to resort to be Linux-exclusive for some time.
-
Martin Bříza