[Coco] Structure note

[Mark Marlette]

This is a message that I wrote to Boisy on the structure and release 
processing here at Cloud-9. It might help others to understand the scripts 
that build the distributions and how to setup their systems for EASY future 
releases of the NitrOS-9 project.

Original message starts here.........

As we have discussed at great lengths on the phone. The structure of the 
distribution is very good. To add the version as a directory name this is 
how I do it here at C-9 North.

Setup:

/d0 = 40T DSDD 5.25"
/h0 = drive to image with what ever release, 63 or 6809.
/h5 = ZIP 100 (Has images of all distributions, extra cmds directory and 
word processor in it)
/d2 = 80T DSDD 3.5"

I take the .dsk images from the distribution of the NitrOS9.org site. Dsave 
them into the following path on my ZIP disk. Example is for 6309 version 
and release VER030200.

cd /d0
dsave -s32 /h5/CLOUD9/VER030200/6309L2 ! shell

This copies the floppy .dsk made from my Win'95 box to my ZIP archive disk 
for custom distributions. After both disks are copied with the above 
commands. I then do the following which adds REV level to the distribution 
in the directory structure. THIS IS SO EASY AND wonderful!

cd /h5/CLOUD9/VER030200/6309L2    'this puts me at the root of the versions 
directory I do this just as a starting reference in this example.

cd nitros9 'at this point the next level in the structure is 6309L2 
directory. All I have to do is RENAME the 6309L2 directory to VER030200 and 
boom it is done! I then can do the following cmd:

cd ...  'Takes me back to the root of the current distribution
format /h0  'answer all the ?? as it asks
dsave -s32 /h0 ! shell  'moves the distribution to the hard drive that I'm 
configuring

What 10 minutes or so for it to complete then go in and edit the bootlists 
and copy over my mb_superscsi_floppy_d0, mb_superscsi_hard_dd and mb_hdb_dd 
files and build and test. I can do this whole process in under a 1/2 hour! 
My time is under 5 minutes because I don't just sit there and wait for it 
to complete.

Hopefully this will help others as well as an update doc for future revs... 
I do this everyday and isn't as easy for others. Actually if you don't do 
it for awhile I have to think about it. But the last year, C-9 customers 
have kept me making the disks and system....... :)

The power of the system is GREAT. I do notice a considerable speedup when 
going to 6309 release of your distribution. Before you could never really 
compare them side by side. Now with your commonality between the releases, 
it is apples to apples.....6309 version is FAST! I can go to 6809 to 6309 
boots on my hard drive with HDB-DOS in under 10 seconds. That is booting 
BOTH OSes, booting one....then RESET, boot to the other! Sweet!!

One happy customer....... :)

Mark
Cloud-9