Re: Packaging Inferno

[Diego Nicola Barbato]

Hello,

Thank you for your feedback.

Nils Gillmann <address@hidden> writes:

> Ludovic Courtès transcribed 1.9K bytes:
>> Hello Diego,
>> 
>> Diego Nicola Barbato <address@hidden> skribis:
>> 
>> > I have written a package definition for Inferno and I would like to know
>> > if it would make sense to add it to Guix.  I am asking because I am not
>> > sure if it is compatible with the FSDG (bundled fonts, trademarks, ...)
>> > and if it would be of any use to anyone.
>> 
>> Removing the proprietary(?) fonts like you did sounds like the right

@Ludo:  The fonts I removed are copyright Bigelow & Holmes.  They are
licensed in a way that forbids them from being modified and distributed
except as part of Inferno (or software derived from Inferno) [1].

>> thing to do.  As for trademarks, please see
>> <https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html#trademarks>
>> to determine whether there’s a problem at all.

@Ludo:  Judging from the link there seems to be no problem with the
trademarks after all.  The bundled fonts (the ones I did not remove),
however, are provided in a format native to Inferno (and Plan 9) and can
not be rebuilt from source, which might be a problem according to this
[2] thread.

>> Could you also check whether all the code is GPLv2+ like the ‘license’
>> field suggests?

@Ludo:  According to the NOTICE files scattered through the source tree
and the Inferno home page [3] different parts of Inferno are licensed
under GPLv2+, LGPLv2+, Expat (MIT-template), Lucent Public License 1.02
and Freetype.
Am I right to assume that I have to mention all of them in the ‘license’
field even though the NOTICE in the root of the source tree [4] says
that the "collection" is governed by the GPLv2+?  
I could not find the Lucent Public License [5] in the (guix licenses)
module.  Should I add it or should I use ‘non-copyleft’?

>> Do I get it right that the build result is a script that launches
>> Inferno as a GNU/Linux process?  It seems like it could be useful.

@Ludo: That is right.  I got the script from here [6].  It starts the
window manager and logs in as the current user; it is supposed to
provide a convenient entry point to start exploring the system.
Alongside this script in %out/bin/ there is also a symlink to the emu
binary which is installed by ‘mk install’ under
%out/usr/inferno/Linux/386/bin/ (Linux/arm/bin on arm machines).  This
directory contains several other executables.  I am considering making
some of them (like the Limbo compiler) available under %out/bin in the
same way as emu. 

>> Some comments about the package definition:
>> 
>> >     (build-system trivial-build-system)
>> >     (native-inputs `(("bash" ,bash)
>> >                      ("coreutils" ,coreutils)
>> >                      ("grep" ,grep)
>> >                      ("sed" ,sed)
>> >                      ("awk" ,gawk)
>> >                      ("xz" ,xz)
>> >                      ("tar" ,tar)
>> >                      ("gcc-toolchain" ,gcc-toolchain)                     
>> > ))
>> >     (inputs `(("libx11" ,libx11)
>> >               ("xorgproto" ,xorgproto)
>> >               ("libxext" ,libxext)))
>> 
>> Like Efraim wrote, I think using ‘gnu-build-system’ would allow you to
>> simplify the package definition.

@Ludo:  My first attempt at writing the package definition used
‘gnu-build-system’. I switched to ‘trivial-build-system’ when I realised
that most phases in %standard-phases were ill suited for building
inferno.  I will try to rewrite the definition using ‘gnu-build-system’.

>> >              ;; build mk
>> >              (invoke "./makemk.sh")
>> 
>> It would be ideal if we had a separate package for ‘mk’ (I suppose it
>> can run on POSIX systems, right?).

@Ludo:  This is Plan 9's mk (their version of make), which, I believe,
can run on POSIX systems.  Though, if we were to add mk to Guix, i would
rather package the one provided by Plan 9 from Userspace [7] since that
project seems to be more active than Inferno.

> I can finish my mk package and send it in.
> My mk is the canonical set of mk files as used by bmake.
> Sources are from http://crufty.net/help/sjg/mk-files.htm
> and/or places linked from there.
>
> If this matches the mk mentioned here, I can create this patch.

@Nils:  Your mk package seems to be unrelated to Plan 9's mk.

>> Once you’ve double-checked the licensing and trademark situation, I
>> think you can go ahead and submit it as a patch (or two patches, with
>> ‘mk’ separately).
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> 
>> Ludo’.
>> 

Greetings,

Diego


[1]:

LICENCE
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[2]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-guix/2018-10/msg00010.html
[3]: http://inferno-os.org/inferno/licence.html
[4]:

NOTICE
Description: Binary data

[5]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#lucent102
[6]: https://www.ueber.net/who/mjl/inferno/getting-started.html
[7]: https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/