Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Shared libraries in Gentoo

[Enrico Weigelt]

* Al <oss.elmar@××××××××××.com> wrote:

> Even if they are pro forma open source they are mainly usefull
> for the very distribution.

No, many patches are quite generic or could be easily fixed
to be that. OSS-QM makes sharing and automatic notification
on new patches easier.

> In this sense they are the propriatary work and the capital of
> each distro. So I guess it will be difficult to convince them
> to store their patches into a common QM repository.

That's why I'm working on automatic imports.

For Debian packages (at least those complying the recent
guidelines) it's almost done (for now just for a few packages
as proof-of-concept, but can be made more generic).

Gentoo is a bit trickier, since patching is called explicitly
from each ebuild (sometimes even useflag-dependent). The Gentoo
devs could help a great deal if they would set a policy like:

* all patches have to be normalized (eg. *always* apply w/ -p1)
* a easily machine-readable (eg. via grep+sed ;-o) list of patches
  to apply on a specific version (eg. in the ebuild or a separate
  file)
* make the patches independent from useflags
* do sourcetree changes _exclusively_ via patches (no file copy-in's
  or directly changing files w/ sed etc)

> That's true as far as we speak of unixoid environments. To port
> programs to other environments requires more efforts than just a
> proper build system.

Yes. The individual package has to sit ontop of properly defined
interfaces (eg. POSIX), and require the target to provide that
(if it doesn't, fix the target's system libs, toolchain, etc).

> The original idea of Java was, to bring a standard layer into
> any environment, that would remove the need of ports.

Yes, but that's a matter of the basic class libraries, not
the language. The same can also be done in plain C.

> > The interesting point in Java is that it is an (well, was) an
> > very cleanly defined virtual machine (even virtual processor)
>
> One interesting point is, that it is was very successfull, but on
> completly different fields than origninally targeted. Most Java
> doesn't run platform independent programs, but runs servers, that
> don't need to be platform independent at all.

Well, that's a quite strange effect. IMHO that doesnt have anything
to do w/ the platform agnosticism, but the language concepts which
might be better suited for those applications.

> Java was also designed to facilitate programming comparing C. Still
> Java itself isn't the last clue. Take the horrible way to copy a
> simple array.

Yes, there're also other concepts I miss in Java, eg. native 
associative arrays, language constructs for parallelisms, etc.

> Briegel is strongly focused on the technolgical basics, without
> talking of all possible usecases. At least mine was not addressed. :-)

Yes, it's focused on the basic job of building packges to virtually
any target platform (from embedded to clusters ;-p). A bit similar
philosophy as git ;-)
 
> Still Briegel looks like a one-man-show while there are already
> communities behind the Cygwin and the Gentoo candidate.

True, right now I'm the only active developer here. Historically
it had been an proprietary product as building block for very
customer-specific setups, which I published as oss a while ago.

> What is your strategia to build up a community?

Actually, I don't really have any. All I can do is offering it
as OSS and do a little bit advocacy here and there - I don't
have the resources to build up real community structures all
alone. Of course, anybody's welcomed to join in.


cu
-- 
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 Enrico Weigelt, metux IT service -- http://www.metux.de/

 phone:  [phone]  email: weigelt@×××××.de
 mobile: [phone]  icq:   210169427         skype: nekrad666
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 Embedded-Linux / Portierung / Opensource-QM / Verteilte Systeme
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