Gentoo Archives: gentoo-osx

From: Stroller <macmonster@×××××××××.com>
To: gentoo-osx@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-osx] Some Introduction
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 06:14:48
Message-Id: 14810457da06b2ea0c1c030049e9a8b4@myrealbox.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-osx] Some Introduction by Kito
1 Sorry to come to this so late - I'm just back from holiday.
2
3 On Aug 8, 2005, at 6:38 am, Kito wrote:
4 >
5 > Maybe you misunderstood, what I think is futile is trying to avoid
6 > overwriting files, and accommodating things portage has no knowledge
7 > of or control over.
8
9 Unless you avoid over-writing Mac OS's system files Gentoo-OSX will
10 never become mainstream. I don't know if this is of interest to you or
11 not, but I for one will never install Gentoo-OSX unless it installs
12 safely into an /opt (or similar) directory - overwriting Apple's system
13 files is _bound_ to break something eventually.
14
15 You say that accommodating Appe's system is accommodating files portage
16 has no knowledge of or control over, but at least you have control over
17 the whole portage tree.
18
19 Imagine I spend several ££$£$$£$£$£ on Mathematica, and have a problem
20 with it; I contact Wolfram support and they say, "Do you have
21 Gentoo-OSX installed? Sorry, we can't support you - you might have
22 over-written any of Apple's system files, so we need to you format your
23 hard-drive & reinstall OS X before submitting this bug".
24
25 There is no way that Gentoo can resolve a situation like this to the be
26 benefit of the user. If, on the other hand, apps-foo/bar-player depends
27 upon Apple's tar to unpack it, and Apple break that, then you're in a
28 position to change the ebuild and have a fix rolled-out for all users
29 next time they sync the tree.
30
31 I haven't ever used Portage on OS X, and I don't develop for
32 Gentoo-Linux (just submit the occasional bug report and do testing),
33 but I've been using Gentoo for a couple of years now and have been
34 interested in this project from the start - it was my G4 that Dan
35 Robbins shelled into to first try porting Portage in June 2003. It
36 seems to me that an understanding that over-writing Apple's system
37 files MUST affect system stability, and is hence something that the
38 majority of users should avoid, would go a long way to getting this
39 project taken more seriously by devs of other arches.
40
41 Stroller.
42
43
44 --
45 gentoo-osx@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-osx] Some Introduction Finn Thain <fthain@××××××××××××××××.au>
Re: [gentoo-osx] Some Introduction Kito <kito@g.o>