Re: [aps-devel] From source?

[Robert Millan]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2002 at 05:49:32PM -0200, Lalo Martins wrote:
> Hi there, nice project ;-) I found it while researching if I should start a
> similar one... but yours seem promising and in the right track, so I prefer
> to contribute.

that's great. but this is quite stopped for now..

we have to discuss a lot of topics but because of the modularity of the
project, some work can be started already. I think Wolfgang is working on a
kitten translator currently. I'd like to start writing a simple component
as i need to learn a lot about Hurd interfaces yet.

oh, and i'm very busy at the moment. probably next summer i'll have time to
take it on seriously.

uhm.. shall i write a TODO?

> I am a GNU advocate since IIRC '96, have been a Debian developer for a few
> years, then I gave up and become a Debian user.  Now I switched to Gentoo
> and I'm convinced ports-like "from source" pkg systems are the only
> reasonable way to distribute/manage modern Free Software (for an example of
> what I mean, check how many .debs there are for SDL: one compiled for arts,
> one for oss, one for osd, one with everything plus a dummy package).

Well I disagree with that, as think there are other solutions for problems
like SDL's (and i'm somewhat RISC-zealot ;)

But i don't think Aps should be dependant on using only binaries, or only
source (actualy when we start to use it and the trust web is not strong
enough we'll be forced to use sources), but rather have both options.

So if you want to install from source, for example we could have (why not?)
a (slow) translator that builds a source package and provides the resulting
files, while doing some form of local caching with the results.

Another idea that might be interesting would be to integrate the sources
of a package in the same binary package tree, eg:

<package>/all/src/foo.c
<package>/i386/bin/foo

Where <package>/all contains non-arch-specific files and <package>/i386
contains files for i386. then the installer (unionfs or a derivative) would
merge them together and get /src and /bin into the / hierrachy.

> So, I'd like to inquire as to the other extremity of the process; so far you
> have been talking about installing/updating/removing packages, unionfs etc.
> But how do you get the package in the first place?

You mean the user or the developer?

If you mean the user, he/she'd have the package in his/her filesystem hierracy,
in /packages, then the combined translators of Aps would provide the package
from GNUnet when asked, after verifying it's a trusted package.

On how the developer would upload his/her contributions to the network i
think we haven't talked yet, but a tool that builds, signs and writes it
into /gnunet could do it.

> I'd like to plead for a ports/portage like system.  If this is going to be
> official GNU stuff, I suppose we could hook Guile into it (as I can't see
> how such a system would work without scripting).

I guess Wolfgang had Guile in mind already :)

> It strikes me that building official GNU software is straightforward due to
> the Coding Standards; we have a more or less hard guarantee that "cd foo;
> ./configure; make; make install prefix=/tmp_fs_something" does the trick.
> However I would like to have a facility similar to portage's USE switches,
> if possible hooked right into configure's --with/--enable.

yes, but distribution building is a separate issue. for what Aps is concerned
it should be provided a signed package (either binary or source), incorporate
it into the archive, and being fetched by end users after its trust being
checked.

so you can use any building interface with Aps. for example nothing would stop
you from taking debian packages or gentoo ports into Aps and building a
debian-based or gentoo-based distribution.

-- 
Robert Millan

"Omnis enim res, quad dando non deficit, dum habetur et non datur,
nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est."

"For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is
not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared." 

                Aurelius Augustinus (354-430)