Fabrizio Balliano

Maybe I’m a bit too enthusiast but… some posts ago I was telling about some far future hopes for UCK and now I find that I’ve already implemented 3/4 of them:

• easier way to interrupt the process and finish it in another session
• easier way to script its parts (customizing the root file system, the initrd, the cdrom)
• support for the “alternate” ubuntu cd-rom

the auto squashfs sort can wait for now, I’m waiting for an answer from the reconstructor team about a possible integration but actually I think we should release UCK before talking about that.

After the latest changes in the code, was really easy to drop the patches system during the deb package building phase. Those patches were quite difficult to maintain and I couldn’t wait to drop them. Now the deb package deploy will be times easier and faster.

:)

My latest commit in the UCK repository I added a couple of scripts to support the remastering of alternate cds.

To rebuild an Ubuntu alternate cd now you can do this:


sudo ./uck-remaster-unpack-iso ubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso
sudo ./uck-remaster-prepare-alternate


do your customizations and copy the packages that you need to add to the cd


sudo ./uck-remaster-finalize-alternate your-gpg-key-id
sudo ./uck-remaster-pack-iso


GPG key id is needed cause we need to re-sign the repositories.

Here we go! Nice hu?

Another small thing I implemented in the last days:

• uck-remaster-unpack-initrd and uck-remaster-pack-initrd now automatically detect if you’re customizing an alternate cd and put the files in the right places

I’m really happy now cause I have something (this new UCK) that’s very flexible to work with and I’m getting big results customizing Ubuntu cds.

UCK and reconstructor are both good software to create a customized Ubuntu derivative.

I’m working hard on UCK in these days thus you can expect big changes soon, but I’m also a user of reconstructor and I can do some considerations, in this post I’l talk about the next UCK release so maybe you can think that something I’m saying is wrong but that’s because you’re still working with the old UCK.

• UCK is bash scripting, reconstructor is python GTK. For some things UCK is easier to script and customize because many users know bash, less know python
• reconstructor does many things that UCK doesn’t: gnome environment customization, alternate cd customization are just two examples
• UCK can used to automatically generate ISOs without user interaction
• UCK has a nice support to install language packs and customize gfxboot language selections
• reconstructor has a nicer GUI also if it’s GTK only, UCK GUI can be used within CLI/GTK/QT environment thanks to dialog/zenity/kdialog but we can’t build complex UI with those tools

So what are the conclusions? Both projects have the same goals, both have a common part of code that could be reused.

The next UCK version will bring a good set of small scripts that everyone can call to do every single task of a remastering, thus my thought is that UCK should concentrate on the back-end scripts and reconstructor on the GUI. I hope for the future that reconstructor could drop his back-end scripts and use UCK’s ones, working together to bring better software for everyone.

If you want, check out the development version of UCK.

Yesterday, with Krzysztof Lichota, we released a small enhancement for the Ubuntu Customization Kit, fixing a small bug with feisty/gnome frontend and adding a menu icon for an easier “hey where’s that damn software” phase.

I think UCK is a good software for its purpose, anyway for many people is difficult how to use it the best way and how to understand how to do complex things with it. I’ll surely write a small comparison between UCK and reconstructor (I love that software too) but that will happen in another post.

Talking about the future of UCK… here’s what I’d like to see:

• easier way to interrupt the process and finish it in another session
• easier way to script its parts (customizing the root file system, the initrd, the cdrom)
• automatic squashfs sort for a great performance boost of the livecd booting and running
• support for the “alternate” ubuntu cd-rom

The second point would help us with the learning curve… also if we all know that we would need documentation.

Some people asked us if the project is still alive… well absolutely yes but the development is really slow, Krzysztof and I are really busy with many (maybe too many) free software projects and… well that project would need more human-force but… I hope more developers will join us in the future, anyway for now UCK works flawlessly also if we don’t have a fast release cycle.