"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd">
<!--
- Copyright 2011 Colin Walters <walters@verbum.org>
+ Copyright 2011,2013 Colin Walters <walters@verbum.org>
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
<refnamediv>
<refname>ostree</refname>
- <refpurpose>Operating system build, deployment, and development tool</refpurpose>
+ <refpurpose>Manage multiple bootable versioned filesystem trees</refpurpose>
</refnamediv>
<refsynopsisdiv>
<cmdsynopsis>
- <command>ostree <arg choice="req">--repo=REPO</arg> <arg choice="req">COMMAND</arg> <arg choice="opt" rep="repeat">OPTIONS</arg></command>
+ <command>ostree <arg choice="req">COMMAND</arg> <arg choice="opt" rep="repeat">OPTIONS</arg></command>
</cmdsynopsis>
</refsynopsisdiv>
<refsect1>
<title>Description</title>
- <para>OSTree is a system for building, deploying, and
- developing Linux-based operating systems. For many
- cases, it can fill the role of "package managers" such
- as RPM and .deb.</para>
- <para>At its heart, OSTree is very similar to git -
- but it is designed explicitly for managing files like
- ELF binaries. Unlike a typical version control
- system, OSTree is capable of tracking file UID and
- GIDs, as well as all extended attributes such as ACLs
- and SELinux security contexts. You should think of
- OSTree as a flexible but specialized userspace
- filesystem.</para>
+ <para>
+ OSTree is a tool for managing multiple bootable
+ versioned filesystem trees, or just "tree" for
+ short. In the OSTree model, operating systems no
+ longer live in the physical "/" root directory.
+ Instead, they parallel install to the new toplevel
+ <literal>/ostree</literal> directory.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Unlike <literal>rpm</literal> or
+ <literal>dpg</literal>, OSTree is only aware of
+ complete filesystem trees. It has no built-in
+ knowledge of what components went into creating the
+ filesystem tree.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ It must be emphasized that OSTree only supports
+ <emphasis>read-only</emphasis> trees. To change to
+ a different tree (upgrade, downgrade, install
+ software), a new tree is checked out, and a 3-way
+ merge of configuration is performed. The currently
+ running tree is not ever modified; the new tree will
+ become active on a system reboot.
+ </para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>