Re: [gentoo-osx] Re: sys-apps/findutils (GNU)

[Nathan]

On 11/8/05, Finn Thain <fthain@××××××××××××××××.au> wrote:

> > >My opinion actually was to just let it be ~ppc-macos, since there are
> > >no known problems with the OS provided find and xargs.  When we have a
> > >prefix, we can just install the normal GNU find and xargs (without g
> > >prefix) and have maximum compatibility with the other arches on that
> > >point.
> >
> > Agreed 100%.

Also agreed.  I'm all for maximum Gentoo-compatibility.  I would
prefer all utils that Gentoo expects to be present, be installed and
used by Gentoo in its own prefix, without any name changes.  The less
Apple-specific modifications needed, the better.

> Doesn't that mean that new code that comes to depend on the gfind and
> gxargs usage will also have to be changed at that later date? If you avoid
> this policy now, you avoid that problem later. No-one has yet come up with
> an inadequacy of BSD xargs and find, so why do it? Just for the sake of a
> misguided policy?

A lack of examples on your part does not a misguided policy make. 
Have you ever used both BSD and GNU utils extensively?  Even something
as simple as 'ls' doesn't have the same behaviour and flags between
them, not to mention that each version can have changes introduced
upstream without warning.  What do you have to gain from using a BSD
util?  Saving 100KB in disk space?  There's a lot to gain by
installing what Gentoo expects: it may actually work.

As for xargs specifically, take a peek at the synopsis from the BSD &
Gentoo man pages:

(BSD/OS X) xargs SYNOPSIS
     xargs [-0pt] [-E eofstr] [-I replstr [-R replacements]] [-J replstr]
           [-L number] [-n number [-x]] [-s size] [utility [argument ...]]

(Gentoo) xargs SYNOPSIS
       xargs  [-0prtx]  [-e[eof-str]]  [-i[replace-str]] 
[-l[max-lines]] [-n max-args] [-s
       max-chars]  [-P  max-procs]  [--null]  [--eof[=eof-str]]  
[--replace[=replace-str]]
       [--max-lines[=max-lines]]    [--interactive]  
[--max-chars=max-chars]   [--verbose]
       [--exit] [--max-procs=max-procs] [--max-args=max-args] 
[--no-run-if-empty]  [--ver-
       sion] [--help] [command [initial-arguments]]

See any potential problems?

> But, it seems to me that there is a good compromise, along the lines of
> Diego's eselect proposal (similar to Debian's /etc/alternatives). We could
> use eselect or similar to maintain a "symlink farm" of g-prefixed symlinks
> to the GNU binaries. A baselayout revision could safely permit a
> Gentoo-wide policy whereby such gfoo binaries could be called from any
> boot script, tool script etc. In this way, you can avoid having to special
> case the distro in ebuilds and scripts, and you can avoid pulling in
> redundant deps on systems that ship the same binaries without g-prefixes.
> On those systems, the vendor package could just be "eselected" to create
> the symlinks, and indeed the baselayout for such systems could ship with
> the symlinks already in place.

Assuming I understand your point correctly (which is debatable), that
is an awfully complicated solution whose primary aim seems to ensure
that you don't confuse /some/prefix/bin/someutil with
/usr/bin/someutil by turning one into a symlink to the other.  If you
need to figure out which util is called by default in your shell
session, try using 'which'.  If you need to _ensure_ that you use OS X
utils while in a shell, a simpler solution would be to not put the
gentoo directories in $PATH in the first place.

> That is the only way I can see for compatibility both with the variety of
> Darwin distros, and with the variety of Gentoo OS's.

Why would Gentoo need to stay compatible with "Darwin distros"?  OS X
isn't going anywhere if you install Gentoo in a prefix.  The whole
idea is to have a Gentoo package manager installing Gentoo stuff in
it's own little corner of the filesystem.  We DO want to keep
gentoo-osx as compatible as possible with all the __other gentoo
arch's__ so that we can leverage all the good work being done for
those arches.

Kudos to Kito et al. for all the hard work so far.  It's exciting to
hear the news about the prefix-patched portage progress. (how's that
for alliteration?)

~ Nathan

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