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John Davis posted <1083296558.8842.127.camel@××××××××××××××.com>, |
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excerpted below, on Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:42:38 -0400: |
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|
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> To start preparing for 2004.2 in July, releng is opening up Feature |
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> Requests that the community would like to see included in 2004.2. The last |
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> day that we are accepting requests is Friday, May 7th at which point |
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> releng will hold a meeting and decide which requests are feasible for both |
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> the alloted time and workload. Thank you for your time and your requests. |
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|
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Here's (what should be) a simple one. |
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|
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Include a "man" binary in the stage-one tarballs. |
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|
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I'm new to Gentoo, having started with 2004.0, but have yet to |
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successfully get a working system, (after having waited for .1 to come |
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out before trying again, after a first learning run). A lot of the reason |
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is the way I go about it, demanding (and eventually getting) a system |
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customized to my wishes from the get-go, learning huge gobs of stuff along |
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the way, that it'd otherwise take me quite awhile to learn, as I'd never |
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be confronted with issues forcing me to learn it in ordinary operations. |
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Computing is my hobby, not my profession, so I'm not on a deadline, and |
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I'm fine with all that. |
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|
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One of the things I've done is analyze the bootstrap(-2.6).sh script and |
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do a single ebuild at a time (with proper bootstrap and build use flags |
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where appropriate) what those scripts do in one huge step. In an earlier |
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run I got far enough into things to make use of the emerge and friends man |
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pages, which helped me understand quite a bit more of what was going on. |
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Then I decided I wanted to start over, and did so, cleaning the partitions |
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and installing the new (now 2004.1) stage-one tarball, and going from |
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there. However, I was having problems getting one (unstable) package to |
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properly emerge, and wanted to try the single-step-at-a-time ebuild |
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command instead. |
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|
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Trouble was I couldn't remember the steps and man isn't yet installed at |
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that point in the process. |
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|
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As it happens, I'm installing using a chroot from a running Mandrake |
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(AMD64) system, and I got around the problem by creating a script named |
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gman to be run from OUTSIDE the chroot, that would set $MANPATH to the |
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Gentoo mounted version (copied from the /etc/profile.env file and modified |
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to include the gentoo root mountpoint), before calling (the Mandrake) man. |
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Thus, I could "gman ebuild", "gman portage", etc. A few commands used |
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in both distribs are slightly different between them, and with gman |
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setting the gentoo path exclusively, and my regular mandrake manpath |
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unmodified, I could call up the manpage for whichever version I wanted, |
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using either man or gman, from OUTSIDE the gentoo chroot. |
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|
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I find it rather strange and frustrating that after updating my |
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chroot environment per the handbook instructions, I have a $MANPATH |
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variable setup perfectly correctly, within the chroot, but no "man" binary |
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to use it, until rather later in the bootstrap process. |
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|
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Thus, my request is simply to provide a man binary in the stage-one, to be |
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overwritten later when it is compiled, just as with the other basic |
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binaries from coreutils. This would be of /tremendous/ help to "stubborn |
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mules" such as myself <g>, that like to do things the HARD way, learning |
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as they go. I definitely found it rather disconcerting to be without a |
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working man system, even while the documents and manpath itself were |
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setup. It's kinda hard to learn as you go when you can't read what you |
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are supposed to be learning! <g> |
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|
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OTOH, I DID learn how to setup $MANPATH manually to access "foreign" |
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manpages, something I would have missed if the stage-one HAD supplied a |
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binary man, and a good place to apply such "theoretical" knowledge, so it |
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wasn't without its benefits. I wish I would have thought of it sooner, |
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however, as I sure wasted enough time trying (without success) to google |
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for the man pages I needed, first. |
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|
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That of course is another suggestion: There are a number of web sources |
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for various standard man pages. Couldn't the Gentoo specific ones be |
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hosted somewhere and a link to them be placed in the handbook? The |
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handbook does provide a good introduction to use flags and some of the |
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additional features of portage and etc, but fails to provide the |
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detailed info the manpages, particularly the ebuild (1 and 5) manpages, |
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provide. Reading them was an invaluable help in parsing the ebuild |
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scripts so I could understand what was happening, and figure out where I |
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could customize and/or where an ebuild was failing that I HAD customized. |
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I only wish I'd had that info ahead of time, when I'd read the handbook, |
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and the amd64.gentoo.org documentation, in doing my pre-install research. |
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|
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little |
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temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- |
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Benjamin Franklin |
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-- |
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