I have just tagged release-test-v0.3 in svn for the current state of
the Balloon build system/distro.

It is all available at:
http://balloonboard.org/files/balloon3/distro/test-v0.3/

This software pile is a complete revamp since the test-v0.1 release,
and has some major changes since v0.2.

Note that the website has not generally been updated to be in sync
with this yet, so various thing still refer to v0.2 or v0.1. That's
due to be caught-up next/

The fundamentals are:
Everything (except bootloader, jtag tools and vhdl logic) is built
from one tree. SVN checkout in one directory, build tree in another.

There is a kernel, a buildroot rootfs and a debian rootfs.

The normal boot kernel is installed in nand, the same kernel with the
buildroot rootfs (uclibc/busybox based) is installed in nor. This
serves as an initial system installer and backup system if you screw
up the normal boot somehow. For some applications the buildroot rootfs
is all you will need, which will suit a nand-less balloon hardware
configuration.

The default build of both debian and builddroot has enough modules and
software in it to run pcmcia and usb host and slave subsystems, with
usb/ethernet adaptors and wireless ethernet CF cards.

We have spent a fair amount of time trying to make the balloon
accessible automagically from boot in a range of situations (via
wireless, ethernet or USB). Quite a lot of this effort has run into
issues, but it already works for some situations. The details of the
current state of play are best put in another email.

svn contains only stuff we have created or patches. Sources are all
downloaded. Quilt is used to manage the patches for the kernel and
buildroot. A debian package balloon3-config is used to 'patch' debian
for balloon purposes and there is also cued-config, which is a package
that sets up a balloon for use in the Cambridge Uni Eng dept
configuration.

balloon-specific packages (currently just balloon3-config,
zeroconf-packages and cued-config) are available at
deb http://balloonboard.org/debian balloon-etch main 

It should (in principle) be fairly painless to check out svn and do
'make' to get a complete balloon distro image. The wiki page
http://balloonboard.org/balloonwiki/SoftwareBuilding describes the
process (although it needs a bit of updating for the release I just
did, of course). I'd be interested to know if this all works for
anyone else.

The debian rootfs configuration is actually a two-step process. first
debootstrap downloads and unpacks a basic set of packages to make a
tarball. Then that image is copied over to a USB drive. Booting into
the buildroot image ('boot flash' at the boot prompt) allows you to
run 'setup' which unpacks that image and does the 2nd-stage
debootstrap, then packs the result up into a (smaller) release
tarball, which can optionally be installed as the balloon root image.

This is because debian bootstrapping still needs to be done natively
(unless you use scratchbox or qemu or some other cunning that we
haven't tried yet). 

The debian base tarball is 41MB, which unpacks to 122MB (leaving you
about 800MB to play with :-)

We will be having a go with an emdebian rootfs as soon as I get a
chance, to get the base system a bit smaller and faster to boot.

test v0.4 is now being worked on, which should become release v1
fairly soon, and go out on the first 75 CUED boards.

There are plenty of loose ends and things that could be done better in
all this, but it does fundamentally work. Anyone who wants to get
stuck in an help is _very_ welcome.

I'll post separately about network config issues.

I probably forgot some good bits there, but you get the general idea.

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Balloonz - Toby Churchill - Aleph One - Debian
http://wookware.org/