[Discuss-gnuradio] [PyBOMBS] Relaunch and version 2.0

[Martin Braun]

Now that the most important question pertaining PyBOMBS is out of the
way (i.e., we're keeping the name), it's time to move forward to PyBOMBS
2.0.

For those who haven't heard about this: We will be replacing current
PyBOMBS with version 2.0, which comes with a bunch of new features, but
is also mostly incompatible with current PyBOMBS.

I'd like to finalize a release version of PyBOMBS during the Berlin
hackfest coming up soon. Once we have that, we can start providing
installation through pip, which is a big leap forward from our previous
clone-this-repo mode of installation.

Until then, I'd like to invite people to try it out on your own
machines. You can can download it from
https://github.com/gnuradio/pybombs2/commits/master, it comes with a
quickstart guide and a small manual.

The biggest new features are:

- Installable package. You can now install PyBOMBS locally, or
  system-wide!
- Support for multiple prefixes, limited by disk space only
- SDK/cross-compile support
- Support for multiple recipe locations. You can also add your own
  recipe repositories.
- Modular design, it's easy to add more system backends (want Gentoo
  support? Arch Linux? PRs welcome!)
- Uses YAML, our new favourite file format, for everything.
- Smarter detection of installed stuff
- Less cluttered output

PyBOMBS 2 Five Anticipated Questions (FAQ)
==========================================

* Why the big change?

Many reasons, mostly because PB1 didn't support a lot of features we
wanted, but the codebase made it difficult to add those features.

* Will PyBOMBS1 recipes work with PyBOMBS2?

No, because we're going to all-YAML, we have a slightly different
format. However, there's a script to batch-convert recipes.

* Which systems does it support?

Any Linux/Unix really, but it uses apt-get, yum and dnf for installing
packages system-wide if it can. Mac OS X support is in the making. We've
tried staying portable, but that still needs improvement. Windows support
is possible, but not yet planned. I guess Cygwin would work, if we
update the majority of packages to include pkg-config info.

Using emerge, portage, pacman or whatever as system-wide installer
backend would be easy and if someone wants to do that, we're open for
PRs.

* Does it have a GUI?

Nah, that wasn't a priority. Would be nice, and will certainly come one
day.

* Where did all the semicolons go?;

We cut-and-pasted the semicolons to the latest additions in gr-fec,
where they can lead a happier life as actual parts of code.


-- Martin