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Good morning, |
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|
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I have some ideas for Summer of Code which i'd like to discuss with you. |
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|
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I'm mostly interested in making GNAP usable and my proposal includes |
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lots of tasks in GNAP and catalyst, of which i'd like to finish as many |
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as possible and do some research on the rest. |
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|
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catalyst tasks: |
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|
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• Squashfs snapshot support |
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I don't like it, that it takes so much time to unpack a new snapshot and |
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it takes so much disk space to store it. Plan is: distribute tree |
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snapshots as squashfs images, mount them directly into the workdir, |
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use /mnt/distfiles and /mnt/packages instead of snapshot subdirectories. |
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|
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• (Squashfs seedstage support) |
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Maybe the same is possible for stages? A future plan for this could be |
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to mount the squashfs image directly and use unionfs for the real work, |
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but i have no idea how deleting files in such a setup works. Research is |
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necessary here. |
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|
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• uclibc-cross-compiling support |
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Cross compiling is hard, but it should be possible to build arch-uclibc |
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from arch. Research, what needs to be done combined with the |
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implementation, if possible. This would also make GNAP more flexible. |
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|
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• Documentation |
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In an email from some days ago i read, that documentation is planed for |
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after the release. I could support this and proofread it, since i need |
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the knowledge anyway. |
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|
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• (Code cleanups) |
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I write this everywhere, but since i need a basic understanding, i have |
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to read (parts of) the source and maybe i find something worth |
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improving. |
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|
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• Cross compiling research |
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This is the continuation of the uclibc stuff with some plans on what |
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could be done how. |
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|
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• Non-root builds research |
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Wouldn't it be nice if being root was not necessary for using catalyst? |
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I would like to look into the possibilities there and what is needed to |
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make it reality. |
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|
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|
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GNAP tasks: |
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|
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• Code/Tree hosting, VCS |
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I've done some work last year and that does only exist as some patches, |
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since there is no central repository for GNAP development. First i'd |
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like to establish one and move all existing resources there. |
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|
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• GNAP 2.1 |
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There are some known and easy to fix bugs in GNAP 2.0. There have also |
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been some code cleanups. The last thing is, that the current GNAP is not |
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really usable, since the tree snapshot is so old, that most of the |
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distfiles are not fetchable from mirrors or other places. So i'd like to |
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make a new release, be it in the tree or in an overlay. |
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|
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• Reimplementation in python research |
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Catalyst is written in python, maybe we could make better use of it if |
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we reimplemented some parts of GNAP in python? This is just a research |
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item, i'd like to look into it and form some statement about it. I'll |
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probably not do it. |
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|
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• uclibc-cross-compiling support |
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This depends on catalyst. |
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|
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• (Cross-compiling support) |
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My last years project. My thoughts/plans about that should be discussed |
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with the community and put on the GNAP development website. |
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|
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• GNAP releases, long term support |
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This is just an idea i have. Think of something like this: With each |
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gentoo release, we take the release snapshot, form our reduced GNAP |
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snapshot (only supported profiles, unsupported USE flags masked, |
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unneeded ebuilds (X, desktop stuff) not in the tree) and support it for |
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some time security wise (like the releng team does during release). This |
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is more of a research topic, with informing what needs to be done, |
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writing of scripts, maybe doing a proof of concept (maintaining a |
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snapshot for some weeks to see how it works). |
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|
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|
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Thanks for reading this, any comments are welcome, constructive, |
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destructive, "this is not necessary" and "i like to see this one", and |
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most of all "i/we've been working on this with the following results". |
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This is not about occupying me, this is about helping. |
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|
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I set the Reply-To to gnap-dev, you're welcome to join there, it's |
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really really low traffic at the moment. |
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|
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Philipp |
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|
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-- |
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gentoo-catalyst@l.g.o mailing list |