AW: [gentoo-dev] New developer : Markus Duft (mduft)

[Duft Markus]

Hi!

Just read the mail-archive and (i’m not at work), and felt that I have to say something about the binary packages on windows ;) (so sorry for what the outlook web-access thingy does to emails and threads :))

Right now we start using Gentoo Prefix as the primary development environment at our company. For that reason I really need a quick and easy method of setting up new machines with any of the three available version combinations of windows and interix (Interix 3.5 runs on Win2K and WinXP, Interix 5.2 runs on Windows Server 2003R2 only, Interix 6.0 runs on Server 2008 and Vista). For that purpose I wrote a setup program, which is capable of installing Interix itself (also the required windows components), setting up some basic things (for example some configurations in /etc, installing openssh, etc.), and finally unpacking a binary prefix snapshot.

The snapshot is basically just a tar of a freshly bootstrapped prefix (with some extras like gnome-terminal already compiled), normally rooted at /opt/gentoo. The snapshot is unpacked there, and voila – setup takes about 20 minutes, and after that (if you have an X server running, like for example the open-source Xming – the free one is really unperformant though…) you can start gnome-terminal to start working, yeeha!

Haubi and I had the idea, that binpks would be possible too, and as a little extension, it would be really cool to have an installer like Cygwin has for example. This poses some other problems though, like runpaths etc. I think this approach is better usable for the planned win32 cross prefix – this one will be really cool: cross compile windows native binaries using parity [1] into a separate prefix, which contains only binaries that can run completely without interix (theoretically ;)).

[1] http://www.sf.net/projects/parity

Cheers, Markus

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Fabian Groffen [mailto:grobian@g.o]
Gesendet: Mi 30.04.2008 20:40
An: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Betreff: Re: [gentoo-dev] New developer : Markus Duft (mduft)
 
On 30-04-2008 21:21:06 +0300, Alon Bar-Lev wrote:
> On 4/30/08, Fabian Groffen <grobian@g.o> wrote:
> > I think in that sense Cygwin is more Open Source, because how you get
> >  the primary shell/environment is available too.  However, for me that
> >  doesn't matter, as the OS itself is inherently non-free in that sense,
> >  so that's what you have to accept first thing anyway.
>
> I separate operating system and applications... Just like you run on
> HPUX or AIX... There is Windows.

Ok, then SFU is just your entry point to the system, like your "login"
on AIX or HPUX.

> > Just for your information, we don't do stages at the moment, not in the
> >  forseeable future from my point of view either.  Binpkgs are in the
> >  planning.  In general we just do a full bootstrap, on Interix you need
> >  extra help from "prefix-launcher".
>
> This is sad... I would really like to see fully operating portage on
> Windows... It was more important to me in the past when I actually
> used this OS...

Well... making stages takes time, but more importantly, requires you to
store them somewhere, and infra has no space for that.  I do, but my
internet connectivity is not sufficient for that.
Besides, using Portage's binary support is more flexible, as the Prefix
isn't fixed, but adjusted to your need(s).

> I this sense [1] was a great idea! You could always use quickpkg to
> extract binaries.

I probably misunderstand.  quickpkg creates binpkgs, doesn't it?

> [1] http://gentoocygwin.sourceforge.net/


-- 
Fabian Groffen
Gentoo on a different level
-- 
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