And, to clarify, though -u means your code doesn't ask any questions, the underlying process still asks for at least one thing, the encoding to use for the console. Which choice was defaulted to UTF-8, so I just hit enter.
The first thing to understand is that rpios-gen is simply a front-end to pi-gen. pi-gen has no interactive interface nor any command-line options. It's operation is controlled by the contents of a config file plus the presence or absence of empty (0 byte) files in various directories. rpios-gen simply collects information (interactively and/or from command-line options) and sets up the required environment before executing pi-gen (build.sh). See README.md for the gory details.
I've never had pi-gen ask me any questions.
I didn't process the crystal clear instructions, so I didn't get that the output images go to the user's home directory. I also now see you setting the variable OUTDIR :(though I don't see that variable being used - perhaps the RP code does so?).Code:
OUTDIR="/home/${REALUSER}/"
OUTDIR is passed to pi-gen through the DEPLOY_DIR parameter in the config file.
I would still appreciate some assurance about what the --delete and --purge switches do. Is there a reason to use or not use them? Especially in a case like mine of successive invocations? There's clearly a lot happening behind the curtain; might NOT using them save time downloading something or other, for example?
While I've not spent much time peeking behind the curtain, I doubt pi-gen bothers to sync existing work directories with the desired contents (i.e. removing packages that were previously installed but not used in the current configuration). You could do some testing to validate this theory. It's safest to include --delete with each new configuration.
Statistics: Posted by RonR — Thu Sep 18, 2025 8:17 pm