[gentoo-alt] Re: Question about Prefix

[Richard Geary]

It turns out that my packaging system has a lot of similarities to Nix,
though I only heard of Nix for the first time last week.  Has anyone used
Nix and care to comment on any benefits or negatives?  www.nixos.org/nix

Regarding your suggestions to improve Prefix, as a Prefix newbie I would
agree that a better bootstrap of RAP could make it more useful, and more
clarity on package stability in Prefix would be beneficial.

Thanks,
Richard


On 20 July 2014 02:26, <heroxbd@g.o> wrote:

> Hey Richard,
>
> Richard Geary <richardg.work@×××××.com> writes:
>
> > Thanks for replying to me about bootstrap script. Separately, I have a
> > existential question about Prefix - I thought I'd email you offline so
> > you can reply with impunity, but I can send it to the gentoo-alt list
> > if you'd prefer.
>
> Ok, let's make it to the list.
>
> > Over the past 2 years I've rolled my own Prefix-style system for my
> > company for building, packaging (binaries), disting and installing on
> > our linux OSs.
>
> Amazing, that's definitely a lot of work.
>
> > I'm reaching a point where my team are going to rewrite it for version
> > 2, but it's still in the design & prototype stages. My question is, if
> > you were to redesign Gentoo Prefix from scratch, what would you
> > change?
>
> Well, I am not the best person to answer this question.  @grobian might
> have a deeper view on the overall design.
>
> IMHO, the Prefix is as good as Gentoo itself.  Even if I were to
> reinvent it, it would still be like this.  That said, there are many
> things left to be done apart from timely update routines to make it more
> useful, for example:
>
>   1. a full synchronization with the gentoo-x86 tree, i.e. retiring of
>      Prefix overlay. (@ottxor)
>   2. a semi-automatic bootstrap procedure for RAP. (@redlizard)
>   3. a stabilization policy making it manageable as well as of production
>      quality by default (ultimate goal)
>
> So, I think we are on the right path.
>
> > Our current system builds & installs each package to its own
> > package/version directory, using RPATHs to link dependencies. We're
> > moving towards a traditional lib/bin/include directory structure with
> > manual selection of version alternatives. I found that dlopen .so
> > loading & ABI versioning becomes impossible with separate
> > package/version directories.
>
> Yeah, I like the traditional lib/bin/include directory style.  And it
> would be rewarding for the Prefix team to see that it could save part of
> your effort.
>
> Cheers,
> Benda
>