Re: [gentoo-dev] new glep draft: Portage as a secondary package manager

[Michael Haubenwallner]

One general Question:
How can open source packages work on Unices which are non-Gentoo-Linux
if there are that many unresolved issues you try to point out ?

This is what autoconf and libtool are for, and if a package lacks using
them, autoconf/libtool-like trickery has to be done in ebuilds.

There are always 'what if' situations, where the secondary package
manager cannot be responsible for. Portage and ebuilds have to avoid
_all_ those situations _only_ if portage is the _primary_ pkg mgr.

As secondary pkg mgr, _some_ basic working things must be presumeable.

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Thu, 19 May 2005 13:05:20 +0200 Michael Haubenwallner
> <michael.haubenwallner@×××××××.at> wrote:
> | Most of the packages (not ebuilds) wont work on systems without
> | /bin/sh (Bourne-Shell, not bash) and /usr/bin/env, so there's no need
> | to have a Bourne-Shell installed in /my/prefix/bin/sh instead of
> | /bin/sh.
>
> So what if /bin/sh is a nastily h0rked non-POSIX implementation? Or what
> if we have packages with a dep upon a specific sh version? The portage
> provided version must be used in all cases.

If /bin/sh is a bad shell, many packages wouldn't work,
independend if installed by hand or by portage/ebuilds.

And if a package depends on specific version, it is able to find such a
version itself or at least to specify the location of the right version.

> | Once this is done, this line will find the portage-installed
> | interpreters:
> | #! /usr/bin/env {bash,perl,python,whatever}
>
> No good, because we won't be using the portage-provided env binary. And
> that only works for things that actually use env (which is considered
> discouraged).

Same here, if a package cannot operate with /usr/bin/env on
non-Gentoo-Linuxes, and is dedicated to run on such Unices,
it should be able to find the right one or get it specified.

No somewhat correct package, which says to run on Unix, should have
hardcoded '#! /usr/bin/perl' but find it in PATH.

> | autoconf-checks: i configure gcc '--with-local-prefix=/my/prefix' in
> | case of prefix!=/usr, so gcc searches in
> | "/my/prefix/lib:/usr/lib:/lib" for libraries by default, and the
> | checks should rely on the compiler to find the right libraries when
> | configuring.
>
> I could dig out a rather large list of annoying counterexamples, all of
> which would need manual fixing...
>

Sure, but what's the problem with manual fixing ?
The one who needs it will look for how to fix it.

And why not let portage support features not required for Gentoo-Linux ?

Portage is just another open source package, which is able to be ported
to other Unices, with the power to become _the_ secondary pkg mgr.

~haubi
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Michael Haubenwallner                    SALOMON Automation GmbH
Forschung & Entwicklung                  A-8114 Friesach bei Graz
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