[gentoo-alt] Re: Question about Prefix

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