The builder doesn't seem like the real problem, especially with Roger's notes. The sparse superblock makes a huge difference with large drives.

The problem I always have is that upgrades expect the standard partioning, and laydown the image according to the standard partioning. That makes it really hard to do things like have larger swap spaces and such.

So even if there's a new builder, it's going to be trumped by using the standard tools to apply/upgrade any image. I realize there are ways to work around this (I've seen mentions of some kind of upgrade splitter a while ago and using Hijack and mark's upgrader works differently) but using the standard tools seems to be dependant on a specified partioning.

It's a bit of a toss-up, I guess. I find it easier and more reliable to manually format than to manually deal with an upgrade.

--Nathan