Giorgio Agrelli <giorgio_a@libero.it> wrote:
(I've been away from this list for years, but i'll write my few thoughts about this... hope to start writing here frequently again :))
Tilman Sauerbeck wrote:
Matthias-Christian Ott [2007-10-05 17:51]:
[...] * automatic version, standards and integration tests for Pkgfiles * more precise and stricter packaging standards * no more footprint mismatches (isolated builds, USE flags like system) * complete localisation (no --disable-nls, ...) * (simple) Pkgfile standard library (common mirrors, functions) * multiple architectures * improvement of pkgutils (attribute, hooks/events, pkgutils library) * redesign of prt-get
You'd have to talk to Johannes to do that, but I guess he's open to suggestions (I believe he's only fixing evil bugs in prt-get these days).
yes, and i'd add that there is ilenia too if you don't like prt-get... ;) it's maintained more than evere and was completely redesigned from 2.x to 3.x.
I had a look at it several months ago. I liked it more than prt-get.
Some points on your list are totally NOT compatible with Per's idea of CRUX, I think (like NLS, USE flags, ...). And I'm sure there's lots of users who _like_ not having NLS and no USE flags. Really :) Seems you want Gentoo with ports/pkgutils :)
I am among those users... the great thing about the crux ports system is that writing ports is really easy and straight forward... the user can easily modify ports to best suit its need, and so s/he has full control over the system. Examining or ignoring some footprint mismatches doesn't seem such a big problem... it's a deal instead in change of full control over the system.
An use flags or feature flags system, extended use of variables in ports, complex footprints and so on would make ports unreadable, hard to create/customize/maintain and will make of pkgutils what now is emerge or pacman. We already have a crux-inspired distribution that has some of those "issues" solved... it's called ArchLinux, is complete, stable, fast (but not as fast as crux) and is a good way between crux, gentoo (and debian).
I used Arch Linux for several years. They have the same problems. Arch Linux has no advantages over CRUX. No feature flags are a necessary consequence of autoconf and the design of some applications. There are applications which have GNOME and KDE support for example. These applications need feature flags, because the user neither wants to install both Desktop environments just run a single application nor to use a KDE application on GNOME if it is available for GNOME. This is just one example. There are dozens of applications with features that depend on the installed software. Footprint mismatches exists, because the build process was not isolated (chroot, container, ...). Last year I tried to write a programme that does that task via ptrace. There are three solutions for tracing system calls (open, read, write, ...) and restricting them: 1. LD_PRELOAD (emerge) The standard glibc functions get replaced by wrapper functions which filter the paths. 2. ptrace(2) (strace, ...) See http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6100. This solution is architecture-specific (see strace source code). 3. Linux Security Module (AppArmor, ...) Also the chroot(2) and RBAC features of grsecurity may be worth a try. -- Matthias-Christian Ott