Gentoo Archives: gentoo-osx

From: Kito <kito@g.o>
To: gentoo-osx@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-osx] Some Introduction
Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2005 05:39:13
Message-Id: B69ADCC6-AD7B-4DAA-8BE7-5F79CFB519CB@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-osx] Some Introduction by Finn Thain
1 On Aug 7, 2005, at 11:48 PM, Finn Thain wrote:
2
3 >
4 > Firstly can I say thanks for your efforts, I certainly appreciate
5 > it, and
6 > the same for the other Gentoo/OS X devs. It is a tough gig.
7
8 =)
9
10 >
11 > On Sun, 7 Aug 2005, Kito wrote:
12 >
13 >
14 >>>
15 >>> Ok, this probably all sounds a bit depressing, or put differently,
16 >>> quite unpromissing. However, all I need for now is some guide
17 >>> into the
18 >>> wilderness I guess. What are the (common) targets of the team?
19 >>> What
20 >>> is it 'we' want to achieve? Who thinks what?
21 >>>
22 >>
23 >> Well, my basic feeling is the current method of trying to accommodate
24 >> Apple supplied userland is futile, its working against the
25 >> advantages of
26 >> the portage tree.
27 >>
28 >
29 > Grobain, he reason this approach was taken (and this can be found
30 > in the
31 > list archives and forum), was that there was no alternative. The
32 > mythical
33 > pathspec was supposed to provide it. And, significantly, pathspec
34 > wasn't
35 > going to be needed to have a Gentoo/Darwin distro, anyway.
36 >
37 > Kito, because of Gentoo/Darwin, this is not futile. And it saves
38 > space on
39 > your own machine.
40
41 Maybe you misunderstood, what I think is futile is trying to avoid
42 overwriting files, and accommodating things portage has no knowledge
43 of or control over.
44
45 > OS X has a decent binary package manager, why not
46 > exploit it? Updating a dot release on OS X is easier than emerge -Du
47 > system.
48
49 Because relying on Apples proprietary stuff is asking for trouble,
50 its liable to change at any given moment without notice. However,
51 emerge'ing from .pkgs is in testing as we speak...
52
53 >
54 > And if portage acquires the ability to pull deps from several prefixes
55 > (which is apparently part of the plan) it sacrifices nothing to use
56 > OS X
57 > deps.
58
59 It sacrifices huge amounts of manhours, ebuild consistency, and
60 again, what works with apples current releases will probably not work
61 in future releases...Its pretty hard to second guess at team of >30
62 engineers on a project without live cvs...
63
64 >
65 >
66 >> All the apps in portage are tested/tweaked/hacked/patched/whatever to
67 >> work with THE APPS IN PORTAGE, not with 3rd party software
68 >> supplied by
69 >> arbitrary vendors.
70 >>
71 >
72 > There are two problems here: one is the vendor deps, i.e. the present
73 > practice of package.providing deps that are not equivalent to the
74 > ones OS
75 > X provides. This problem goes away as soon as we get ebuilds that can
76 > produce some of apples opensource packages that we use as deps. Apple
77 > being apple, this was always a big ask, but darwinbuild should help.
78
79 I don't think the problem goes away as much as it changes, although
80 for the better IMHO and this is one of the very things I work on
81 frequently. darwinbuild is a great tool, I've watched it grow and
82 helped hack on it a little bit. Still not quite sure how it will fit
83 into portage in the long run...
84
85 >
86 > The second problem is that devs now have the job of making sure
87 > that the
88 > portage tree is portable: ebuilds have to work with Portaris,
89 > Gentoo/Darwin, Gentoo/BSD (a lot like Darwin),
90
91 I wouldn't say a *lot* :p
92
93 > as well as Gentoo/Linux.
94 > This means a few more guidelines for writing ebuilds, but adds
95 > great value
96 > to the portage tree.
97
98 Agreed.
99
100 >
101 >
102 >> In other words, the path of least resistance is allowing portage
103 >> to do
104 >> what it does best, manage software that is has knowledge of,
105 >> instead of
106 >> us constantly lying to it about deps,etc. i.e. when an ebuild has
107 >> DEPEND="app-shells/bash", that means it depends on the bash in
108 >> portage,
109 >> if you have the bash from BeOS/FC4/FBSD/Darwin/NewOS/Whatever its not
110 >> supported, and likely to cause problems somewhere down the line...
111 >>
112 >
113 > Exactly. And this is not new, see the ML archives for the threads on
114 > "optional os x packages" and "zip, and more, in package.provided",
115 > etc.
116 >
117 >
118 >> So, am I saying portage on OS X is a dumb idea? Hell no. Am I
119 >> saying the
120 >> only way I see it working is overwriting Apple files? Hell no.
121 >>
122 >> My personal goals for the project in order of my interest:
123 >>
124 >> A self-hosting Darwin OS build-able and maintainable via portage
125 >>
126 >
127 > Would you use a GNU userland (like GNU/Darwin) or an apple one (like
128 > OpenDarwin and OS X)?
129
130 Probably somewhere in between. I have the base system building right
131 now, slowly getting some of apples patches into things like python,
132 bash, bsdmake, etc.
133
134 >
135 > The reason I ask is that the former might mean leveraging the existing
136 > portage tree, whereas the latter might mean creating ebuilds for apple
137 > packages, thus solving the old package.provided problem.
138
139 I don't think there is a silver bullet here. I already have ebuilds
140 for 50 or so darwin system packages, although not in the portage tree
141 yet until things get stabilized more, but I don't think it will be
142 practical to have one or the other. The main challenge in working
143 with Darwin is keeping up with Apples engineers...no real live cvs is
144 a major pain-in-the-ass, so the source just comes in huge dumps every
145 few months, and with the current G/Darwin dev team of well, me, its a
146 slow process indeed. Any help is appreciated ;)
147
148 Thanks a bunch for your input, its always nice to hear from people
149 who actually care about this project.
150
151 --kito
152
153 >
154 > -f
155 > --
156 > gentoo-osx@g.o mailing list
157 >
158 >
159
160 --
161 gentoo-osx@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-osx] Some Introduction Cap'n Hector <me@×××××××××.com>
Re: [gentoo-osx] Some Introduction Finn Thain <fthain@××××××××××××××××.au>
Re: [gentoo-osx] Some Introduction Stroller <macmonster@×××××××××.com>