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bootstrap-initrd

Linux initrd to bootstrap from a small binary seed git clone https://anongit.hacktivis.me/git/bootstrap-initrd.git/

RATIONALES-Exclusion.md (1268B)


  1. # Rationales for Exclusion
  2. For standards/software which would be reasonable in a base system or even expected,
  3. but won't be there in the case of bootstrap-initrd.
  4. ## OpenPGP
  5. Quite involved to implement due to it's packets structure and usage of many algorithms instead of few hand picked ones.
  6. And when it comes to currently available implementations:
  7. - GnuPG is way too big and has too many dependencies
  8. - The verify-only version of NetPGP could be interesting but it's latest "versions" are just shoved as-is in pkgsrc repo instead of a tarball, and it still relies on a pre-made binary pubring file
  9. - Sequoia is in Rust, no way
  10. Alternatives:
  11. - ssh signatures: Still many different algorithms but the format is much simpler
  12. - signify signatures: Very simple, and different implementations to choose from that are appropriate for bootstrap-initrd
  13. ## Programing Languages
  14. Perl, Python, … require archeology into ancient versions to bootstrap from full source.
  15. As demonstrated by live-bootstrap: <https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap/blob/master/parts.rst>
  16. Alternatives:
  17. - POSIX Shell :)
  18. - Lua: Included in extras
  19. - JavaScript: Possible thanks to QuickJS but the System APIs do not match NodeJS/Deno/…
  20. - execline: Effectively just shell but simpler