TazLiTo flavor

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 17.02.2016
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NAME

Tazlito flavor file (.flavor).

SYNOPSIS

name.flavor

DESCRIPTION

A .flavor is a small file contains information needed to (re)manufacture a custom LiveCD of SliTaz.

flavor.flavor file is a cpio.gzip archive that contains next files inside:

flavor.receipt

File describing the flavor using the variables:

FLAVOR: the flavor name
SHORT_DESC: short description
VERSION: free format
MAINTAINER: e-mail address of the flavor maintainer
FRUGAL_RAM: minimum RAM required (optional)
ROOTFS_SIZE: size of rootfs.gz decompressed into RAM (optional)
INITRAMFS_SIZE: size of rootfs.gz on the CD-ROM (optional)
ISO_SIZE: size of CD-ROM (optional)
ROOTFS_SELECTION: optional, see Meta flavor below.

Receipt may contain function custom_rules() executed after installing all packages, adding custom rootfs files, and executing distro.sh script.

flavor.desc

File describing the flavor (the most of the information is taken from the receipt): flavor name, description, version, maintainer e-mail, Live CD RAM size, build date, number of the packages, rootFS size, initRAMFS size, ISO image size.

flavor.pkglist

List of packages without specifying the version (tazlito uses the latest available). This file is missing if ROOTFS_SELECTION exists in the receipt.

flavor.nonfree

Optional list of non-free packages.

flavor-distro.sh

Optional script executed after installing all packages and adding custom rootfs files to perform tasks in the rootfs before compression. Script executed with argument $DISTRO defined in the tazlito.conf(5).

flavor.mirrors

Optional file containing the list of undigest (unofficial) mirrors to be added to include personal packages.

flavor.rootfs

Optional cpio.gzip archive containing the root filesystem tree (so it should contain all the necessary top-level directories such as bin, etc, usr...). Files contained in this archive will be directly extracted to the root filesystem of the prepared flavor (configuration files usually).

flavor.rootcd

Optional cpio.gzip archive that files and folders will be directly extracted to the root of the CD-ROM.

WORKING WITH FLAVORS

Manufacture a flavor

You can choose the flavor to (re)manufacture from among those available:

$ tazlito list-flavors

List of flavors

Name	ISO	Rootfs	Description

base	12.0M	21.0M	Minimal set of packages to boot
core-4in1	42.0M	152.4M	SliTaz core system with justX and base alternatives
core	31.5M	104.6M	SliTaz core system
eeepc	31.2M	105.4M	SliTaz eeepc system
justX	16.1M	51.2M	SliTaz with a minimal X environment

We will start by remanufacturing the eeepc flavor which uses 105.4M of RAM and has a CD-ROM size of 31.2M:

# tazlito clean-distro
# tazlito get-flavor eeepc
# tazlito gen-distro

Create a flavor

To create a flavor, you must:

Either create an ISO image with tazlito gen-distro and then create a flavor file with tazlito gen-flavor
Either directly create the tree structure that defines the flavor (see tazlito extract-flavor) and then create the flavor with tazlito pack-flavor
Either use the online builder http://pizza.slitaz.org/

Post a flavor

Because a .flavor file contains just a few KB, it can be easily sent via the mailing list (http://www.slitaz.org/en/mailing-list.php).

The results of tazlito extract-flavor can also be put in mercurial (http://hg.slitaz.org/flavors). This method is preferred because the tree will be directly visible with the mercurial web interface (http://hg.slitaz.org/flavors/file/tip).

This tree includes:

A receipt file describing the flavor thanks to the variables:
- FLAVOR: The flavor name.
- SHORT_DESC: Short description.
- VERSION: Free format.
- MAINTAINER: Email address of maintainer.
- FRUGAL_RAM: Minimum RAM required (optional).
- ROOTFS_SIZE: Size of rootfs.gz decompressed into RAM (optional).
- INITRAMFS_SIZE: Size of rootfs.gz on the CD-ROM (optional).
- ISO_SIZE: Size of CD-ROM (optional).
- ROOTFS_SELECTION: Optional, see Meta flavor below.
The file packages.list containing the list of packages without specifying the version (tazlito uses the latest available). This file is missing if ROOTFS_SELECTION exists in the receipt.
The optional mirrors file containing the list of unofficial mirrors (undigest) to be added to include personal packages.
The optional directory rootfs containing the tree to add to the root filesystem rootfs.gz (configuration files usually).
The optional directory rootcd containing the tree to add to the root of the CD-ROM.

Adapt a flavor

It is often easier to modify an existing flavor than to create one from scratch. To adapt the eeepc flavor for example:

# tazpkg get-install mercurial
# cd /home/slitaz
# hg clone http://hg.slitaz.org/flavors
# cd flavors
# cp -a eeepc myslitaz

Files in myslitaz can then be changed, and:

# tazlito pack-flavor myslitaz

Will simply create the new flavor.

Tip: you can skip mercurial installation by extracting a flavor. Using the previous example:

# tazlito get-flavor eeepc
# tazlito extract-flavor eeepc.flavor
# cd /home/slitaz/flavors
# cp -a eeepc myslitaz

Meta flavor

A meta flavor contains several flavors like nested Russian dolls. The flavor will be launched at startup according to the amount of RAM available. The ROOTFS_SELECTION variable defines the minimum RAM and corresponding flavor parameters, example (http://hg.slitaz.org/flavors/file/tip/core-4in1/receipt):

ROOTFS_SELECTION="160M core 96M justX 32M base"

A meta flavor doesn't contain a list of packages (packages.list). SliTaz kernels prior to 2.6.30 do not support meta flavors.

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

WORKING WITH FLAVORS

Manufacture a flavor
Create a flavor
Post a flavor
Adapt a flavor
Meta flavor

SEE ALSO