Emdebian Grip packages

A smaller Debian-compatible distro

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Emdebian Grip 1.0 (based on Debian 5.0.6 "lenny") - oldstable
Emdebian Grip 2.0 (based on Debian 6.0 "squeeze") - stable

Grip is a light grip on Debian Squeeze (the codename of the Debian 6.0 release). Small amounts of squeeze, no functional changes and the highest level of functional compatibility with Debian Squeeze and subsequent releases. Includes support for building custom packages on an Emdebian installation as well as the ability to mix and match Emdebian and Debian packages with minimal effort.

Emdebian Grip 2.0 is the current stable release based on Debian 6.0 "squeeze".

Gradually, more packages are added but there will be a limit to the total package set (some packages just don't make sense on devices that would run Emdebian Grip). To suggest a particular set of packages, please send the output of:

$ dpkg --get-selections

to the debian-embedded mailing list.

Integration into Debian

Integration details and mechanism.

The suites need to change when integrated into Debian and this has implications for users of Emdebian Grip unstable (sid). From 1st October 2011, unstable has been replaced by unstable-grip.

Announcement of the change from unstable to unstable-grip. See also the recent Grip status update.

The new sources entries for unstable are:

deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip unstable-grip main

deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip sid-grip main

The old unstable and sid no longer operate and because the underlying Release files have been changed to the new names, symbolic links will not work either.

Wheezy (testing) has already been removed but until uploads can be made to Debian, wheezy-grip is not being updated; using stable is recommended. There are packages available as a snapshot of wheezy-grip:

deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip testing-grip main

deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip wheezy-grip main

Components

To manage the size of the Packages files which are kept by apt, the Emdebian Grip repository is divided up into components. Where Debian has main, contrib and non-free, Emdebian has components which subdivide main into functional categories.

Runtime packages remain in main
Development packages (ending in -dev or in the Debian Sections devel or libdevel are in the dev component and depend on packages in main.
```
deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip squeeze main dev
```
Documentation packages (ending in -doc or in the Debian Section doc are in the doc component and depend on packages in main.
```
deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip squeeze main doc
```
Java packages from the Debian Section java are in the java component and depend on packages in main.
```
deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip squeeze main java
```
Source packages (unchanged from Debian) are in the usual deb-src repository.

This allows devices which only need runtime packages to have a smaller amount of data to download and process when updating and upgrading packages compared to machines which are used to build packages etc.

As long as main is retained, other components can be added or removed on the one apt source line.

Components have been removed from unstable

The integration of Emdebian into Debian means that the Emdebian components will be removed and all packages will revert to main.

Mirrors

Emdebian supports standard Debian push mirror tools. Grip is currently mirrored onto:

http://ftp.uk.debian.org/emdebian/grip - available as an apt source:

deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/emdebian/grip squeeze main dev doc debug java
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/emdebian/grip squeeze main

Other debian.org mirrors can also choose to mirror Emdebian code, just ask to be added to the push on the debian-embedded@lists.debian.org.

The complete Grip archive is mirrored in one push - Lenny, Squeeze, Sid and Wheezy for all supported architectures.

In time, proof-of-concept variants like Crush and Baked will be added to the mirror push.

Methods

Emdebian Grip unpacks .deb archives from Debian using standard Debian tools, removes relevant files and repacks the archive. The effect is to retain the unchanged binaries and maintainer scripts of the original Debian package but reduce the overall size of the package, the package meta-data and final installation size of the package.
Emdebian Grip processes any .deb from any architecture on any architecture. This allows one machine to generate Emdebian Grip packages for multiple architectures. Emdebian Grip 2.0 supports:
```
armel, i386, amd64, powerpc, mips, mipsel, source.
```
Emdebian Grip supports standard Debian methods for creating root filesystems, chroots and even normal Debian installations using the Debian Installer See Preseeding Grip for details.
The preferred way to install Emdebian Grip is multistrap.
Emdebian Grip can use Emdebian TDebs which, so far, only support gettext translations. Although any package in Debian can be "gripped", programs that use non-gettext translation support might lose translations when gripped.

Back to the Emdebian Project homepage.