Re: [gentoo-dev] interactive packages?

Pete Gavin wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I was wondering... Is it required that an ebuild script be completely
> non-interactive?

Yes, otherwise there would be no autobuild.

> I have a few ideas for the kernel configuration
> scripts. I think it might be cool for the for the ebuild to ask the
> installer if he/she wants to load a .config file from somewhere else, then
> run make menuconfig. That way all the modules and stuff can be removed
> with portage-unmerge.

You can do this.
After running "ebuild linux.... unpack" cd to
/tmp/portage/linux.../work/linux
run "make menuconfig/xconfig"
Then continue with ebuild linux... compile

Another possibility would be using the "config" function in ebuild. This was
normaly intedet to be used
for an opional additional configuration-layer. And should normaly modify the
package configuration
files from templates/databses whatever. Normaly this functions hsould be
called after pkg_merge.
But since we have no configuration layer right now and config is only used by
a few packages (for example
qmail runs config-fast from within the config function) we could use the
config function for such an
interactive thing.
Another solution could be using a USE variable to decide if the manual
configuration you described should be
run or a variable that just triggers if a private config file should be used
instead of the default one. Or we could make a sepearate kernel package that
does these manual steps.

But what do you think about that. The kernel ebuild looks if a file (for
example /etc/kernel/[version].config) exists. If so it uses this instead of
the default one.
If you want to configure the kernel for the first time you can do it as I
described above. The copy the .config file to /etc/kernel/[version].config
and the next time you compile the kernel your private config file gets used.

achim~

>
> Pete
>
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