[live-derivs] Live Derivatives Census

[Iain R. Learmonth]

Hi,

You'll likely be aware of the decision of the debian-cd team to switch to
using a vmdebootstrap based live image builder tool for stretch. This
decision was taken due to the fragility of live-build and the lack of
certain features, such as EFI support and verification of downloaded files
that had not come from the archives.

The tool that is currently in development by the debian-live team is known
as live-build-ng. Whilst live-build is not being immediately purged from the
archives, to be honest, its future is currently uncertain. I personally
would not have the bandwidth to maintain both live-build and live-build-ng.

The new tool is very new, only started last week, although we have already
shown that it can build working live images. I'm aware that some derivatives
are working with forks of live-build as the features they needed were
missing and that some are working with older version of live build to avoid
having to change the layouts and configuration formats with every change
that occured.

The choice to switch to live-build-ng for your derivative is, of course, a
decision for your project to make. If you feel you would like to make the
change, or would like -ng to be ready when you do, I would ask that you send
an email to debian-live-derivatives at lists.alioth.debian.org with the
following details:

 * Name/URL/Description of your project (as detailed as you like)
 * A URL to a browseable git repo with your configs (if available)
 * A list of features in live-build you depend on
 * A list of features you'd like to see but never appeared in live build
    (including any in your forked versions if you have forked)

These will help to guide the future of -ng.

live-build-ng will continue to use live-{config,boot} and these packages
will now be developed as native packages by the debian-live team. In the
list above, please also list any problems you've had with these packages
that have not been filed in the Debian bug tracker.

Thanks,
Iain.

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