XBPS: x86 first live ISO image for pre-testing

I didn't want to make this public yet, because there are some critical features missing in XBPS but a friend of mine has put it publicly so here it is... I have built a live image (thanks to my infamous xbps-mklive shell script!) of the GNU/Linux distribution I'm building with XBPS for x86 (more archs to follow in the future).

This contains the minimal base system packages, you can look at the full list in the top level directory of the ISO image (packages.txt). The bootloader (isolinux) will show you three options to boot from, live image, live image running from RAM and boot first HD detected by the BIOS.

Obviously if you have more than 105MB of RAM you can choose the 2nd option, it will run much faster. By default it will use a spanish keymap/locale, you can override it in the bootloader (pressing the TAB key and changing keymap and locale to your prefered settings).

http://lolcathost.org/b/xbps

XBPS: restarting services while upgrading packages

I've just implemented support in XBPS to restart services that a package provides while upgrading packages, such as is implemented in dpkg (I mean theoretically, I haven't looked at the source code).

The attached picture illustrates what I'm talking about: openssh-server-5.2p1_2 is currently installed and sshd running, a new version is available now: 5.3p1. Before removing the installed package, sshd is stopped, new package is unpacked and again sshd (from new version) is started.

The code in shell script is implemented in a trigger, and the package manager doesn't know anything about its details because that's only handled in the INSTALL/REMOVE scripts that are run when a package is removed/installed. The main reason for this is that the package manager itself does not need to know about all this for future possible changes or improvements.

By the way, I've moved the project to Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/xbps

The build templates are still stored in the GIT repository at: http://repo.or.cz/w/xbps.git

Soon I will provide a live image to test XBPS and all its features... stay tuned and enjoy responsibly! heh.