Re: [Libguestfs] [supermin PATCH] rebuild the output it when SUPERMIN_KERNEL or SUPERMIN_MODULES are defined

On Monday, 4 March 2019 12:18:58 CET Masayoshi Mizuma wrote: > SUPERMIN_KERNEL and SUPERMIN_MODULES don't work to guestfish. > > Since guestfish sets --if-newer parameter to supermin, so the environment > variables are not used under the following conditions. > - the output directory exists and, > - the dates of both input files and package database are > older than the output > > To solve that, rebuild the output it when SUPERMIN_KERNEL or > SUPERMIN_MODULES are defined even if --if-newer is set. > > Signed-off-by: Masayoshi Mizuma <msys.mizuma(a)gmail.com&gt; > --- This approach switches from one side of the situation (= SUPERMIN_KERNEL and SUPERMIN_MODULES are not taken into account by --if-newer) to the very opposite side (= setting them always rebuild the appliance). I do not think this is a good idea, since the current situation is easy to workaround (`rm -rf $(guestfish get-cachedir)`), while using a different kernel will always rebuild the appliance after this change (and thus slow every run down).

What is the goal here? Make sure that --if-newer actually rebuilds an appliance when changing the values of SUPERMIN_KERNEL and SUPERMIN_MODULES (even setting/unsetting them)?

I agree that supermin ought to do better in --if-newer checks: for example, removing any of the files of a ext2 appliance (e.g. "root", or "kernel") will not make --if-newer rebuild the appliance. Maybe a better idea could be to record files/timestamps for appliances, so supermin can easily check what's missing/older.