Re: Gentoo GNU/Hurd thread in Gentoo Forums

[Arne Babenhauserheide]

Am Donnerstag 06 November 2008 15:53:53 schrieb Sergiu Ivanov:
> > And since ebuilds are very easy to maintain, it's far easier to keep a
> > system current with them.
>
> Is there any advantage over Debian binary packages when using ebuilds?

Yes. As example I attached the ebuild for "nano". 

And the following is the diff between the ebuild for nano 2.1.4 and nano 2.1.5 
(reduced: only changed lines): 
------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ 
--- nano-2.1.4.ebuild   2008-08-18 06:07:36.000000000 +0200
+++ nano-2.1.5.ebuild   2008-10-09 21:35:24.000000000 +0200
-# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/app-editors/nano/nano-2.1.4.ebuild,v 1.2 
2008/08/18 03:43:38 vapier Exp $
+# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/app-editors/nano/nano-2.1.5.ebuild,v 1.8 
2008/10/09 19:34:18 vapier Exp $

-KEYWORDS="~alpha ~amd64 ~arm ~hppa ~ia64 ~m68k ~mips ~ppc ~ppc64 ~s390 ~sh 
~sparc ~sparc-fbsd ~x86 ~x86-fbsd"
+KEYWORDS="alpha amd64 arm hppa ia64 m68k ~mips ppc ppc64 s390 sh sparc 
~sparc-fbsd x86 ~x86-fbsd"

-       epatch "${FILESDIR}"/${P}-debug.patch #234959
-       epatch "${FILESDIR}"/${P}-open-mode.patch #232079

------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ 

In cleartext: 2.1.5 is deemed stable on alpha, amd64, arm, hppa, ia64, m68k, 
ppc, ppc64, s390, sh, sparc, and x86 while 2.1.4 was "testing" for them. 

Also two patches were no longer necessary. 

Generally, updating an application is only a matter of renaming the ebuild 
file to the version of the application. 

But that also means, every user has to compile the applications himself (I 
like that, but it takes some processing time). 

> Note that I have no special preferences with debs and I'm not sitting
> on a Debian system. What I pursue with this question is whether a
> Gentoo GNU/Hurd would be easier to maintain up-to-date with usual
> Gentoo repositories and whether it would be possible to avoid
> situations like we are in at the moment: some packages are broken and
> a lot of stuff does not work (emacs, for example).

If we get maintainers for the Hurd stuff, then yes. 

But for that we'd still need people who maintain them, and thought it's far 
less work than doing a deb package (just rename the file), the update still 
has to be tested, so someone has to build it which takes about the same time 
as making the deb package. 

So I assume the main advantage is the high geek concentration in the Gentoo 
community :) 

> BTW, I once tried to build emacs from source on Hurd and the attempt
> failed. I used to think that if I have the source code of a program
> for Linux, not using some kernel interfaces, I could easily build it
> on the Hurd, but it proved to be false...

The emacs ebuild is quite complex, so I can well imagine that building it 
isn't that simple... (I attached the ebuild, maybe it can give you a look on 
the difficulty inherent to emacs - the ebuild is one with useflags ("I want 
that feature, but don't want this one") and custom patches). 

Best wishes, 
Arne
-- 
-- My stuff: http://draketo.de - stories, songs, poems, programs and stuff :)
-- Infinite Hands: http://infinite-hands.draketo.de - singing a part of the 
history of free software.
-- Ein Würfel System: http://1w6.org - einfach saubere (Rollenspiel-) Regeln.

-- PGP/GnuPG: http://draketo.de/inhalt/ich/pubkey.txt

nano-2.1.5.ebuild
Description: Text document

emacs-22.3.ebuild
Description: Text document