Re: [gentoo-osx] The road ahead?

>> I see this as an advantage above e.g. Fink, with its own namespace. The
>> namespace variant implies that I have to fudge around with PATH
>> variables
>> and other CLI stuff, in order to get the apps working. I still have no
>> real MacOSX integration, with App folder and GUI starter elements (which
>> would be my biggest feature request)
>
> I see not trashing the existing system software as far more important
> than the minor configuration of your path.  This is Gentoo!  What "App
> folder" are you expecting?  KDE menus, Gnome menus, etc. are basically
> fancy widgets that execute CLI commands when you click on them.

Sorry, but this attitude firmly belong into the "a GUI is just a frontend
to the CLI" camp, where I don't really subscribe too. A CLI has its place,
but a GUI does so, too, and both are not dependent upon.
KDE / GNOME .desktop entries doesn't really compare to Apple's app
folders, because .desktop entries are really just start scripts. An app
folder contains starting scripts and the related resources / libraries in
an all in one package. The idea is that you can copy an app folder around
in your local file system or to another file system (thing .dmg here),
while the application still remains runnable. So you have to include any
library, beside the Apple provided ones.

> If you need something to click on for your own sanity, the logical thing
> for you to do would be to create some scripts in /Applications that
> call the X apps you use when you click on them, assuming you got the X
> apps installed in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if someone
> came up with a fink-commander-like project for OS X (to install and
> run stuff) if the prefixed-installs-hurdle ever gets passed.

>From what I see, fink-commander is a frontend to fink, i.e. to the
packages, not to the actual applications. Last time I checked, a gentoo or
fink package has no concept about which are the actual executables.

>
>> From what I see as a user, the Gentoo packages divide into 4 categories
>>
>> 1) packages which integrate nicely into the system (no dependencies, or
>> dependencies which are properly provided by MacOS)
>
> No collisions and no dependencies?  No reason to wait for gentoo-osx then.

No complicated dependencies. So this is the easiest part, where I still
like to have Gentoo's safety net which keeps knowledge about what files
belong to which package. This allows for clean uninstall, at least what
concerns removing files. I am not quite sure about Fink style install and
uninstall scripts.

>
>> 2) packages which clash with MacOS provided packages, things like python
>> or automake spring to mind
>
> And bash, ls, grep, emacs, vi, vim, gcc, perl, python, tcl/tk, apache,
> etc. etc. etc.

python and automake are the cases which really annoy me, but naturally you
are correct about the other packages, too. If possible I would like to use
an Apple provided gcc, so this package is disputable.

> I would guess this is a _lot_ of packages, including most of the stuff
> that just having a gentoo system depends on.
>
>> 3) packages which depend on 2)
>
> This wold be the rest of the packages.

Yes and no. For me 3) are the packages, which I would like to emerge, but
I cannot because of missing 2) packages. 4) are packages which are still
considered unstable / problematic by the package maintainers, so that I
don't want to toy around with, yet.

>> The biggest problem is obiously the packages in 2)
>
> Which prefixed installs will solve.  When portage fully supports
> prefixed installs, then:
> (1) A base system gets created by devs by whatever means (hopefully
> the only step with mandatory dependencies on Apple tools)
> (2) Regular users install the prefix-enabled base system into a prefix
> (and add $PREFIX/bin, $PREFIX/sbin, etc. to .bashrc)
> (3) 'emerge mypackage' uses the gentoo system in $PREFIX to build
> 'mypackage' and install in into
> $PREFIX/regular/gentoo/path/for/the/package
> (4) USERS REJOICE!
> (5) At this point, I'm sure someone will start a 'fink-commander'-like
> project for people who aren't comfortable with the command-line
>

Maybe I am just not in possession of all the facts, so I will stop
expressing an opinion about this as long as there are no visible results.

> Manually "install" packages whose dependencies won't install?  I think
> you have missed the concept that the dependencies are necessary to
> both compile and run the package.
>

No. manually installing the packages which are needed to emerge the actual
wanted packages. The latter are still emerged via Gentoo.

Regards
Dirk


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