one of the really great things about tc is that almost anything you'd need a remaster for, you can do with an extension instead. i say almost, because for example to get tc to boot from reiser, you'd need to have the reiser extension included in tc before you boot- thus, you need a full remaster for that. that's what i was thinking of when i wrote this:
was thinking about my comment that a frugal install is the closest thing to an os install using tcz, and i had this idea about making remaster the same way. in a frugal install, you mostly copy a couple files into place.
i'm also thinking of [someone] who remasters tc every time he upgrades, because he wants to use it with reiser. as i understand it, tc doesn't support resier until after boot has loaded extensions, thus tc can read and write reiser but not boot from it.
so he's got the extension it needs, but it doesn't load until he's booting.
now suppose you expanded the idea of tce/optional to remastering. you could have a folder called tce/remaster (it would already know where to look if it knew where tce was.) then all you'd need to do is run tc, stick the iso for tc into tce/remaster, put tce and/or tcz extensions (including scripts, new copies of bootlocal, mydata.tgz if you want it included, etc) in there, and enter "remaster" into the prompt. voila, it spits out tce/remaster/remaster.iso
this could mean that all [he] would need to do to upgrade is put an iso and a tcz in a folder and type "remaster" - i've thought of a couple reasons it could be more complicated, but before you tell me about them i want you to know i've thought of them. for someone that remasters every new version i wanted your opinion of the idea. i already realize you think tc generally doesn't need remastering, and i generally agree. i certainly hope i never need to remaster it.
here i'm referring to what i call "full remaster," which is a remaster that goes inside tinycore.gz. this is also the kind of remaster people usually refer to when they use the word "remaster"
when it comes to creating an iso however, some people (who do not want to create a multisession cd to accomplish the same thing) may want to simply add their extensions to the iso before they create a tc cd. it's not needed if they're just going to make a bootable usb, but it is helpful for people making cd's. again, it's not needed because you could also put the extensions on usb... even if it's not bootable, but then you have to carry both cd and usb around.
so i would have not only tce/remaster for adding extensions like reiser to tinycore.gz, but also tce/addtoiso for adding extensions to the iso file outside tinycore.gz. at the moment i don't know anyone with the time to do this, but i think it's a good way to make remastering as easy as adding extensions- even if it's usually unneeded, i think it could be easier when it is.