[gentoo-dev] interactive packages?

[gentoo-dev] interactive packages?

[Pete Gavin]

Hi,

I was wondering... Is it required that an ebuild script be completely
non-interactive? I have a few ideas for the kernel configuration
scripts. I think it might be cool for the for the ebuild to ask the
installer if he/she wants to load a .config file from somewhere else, then
run make menuconfig. That way all the modules and stuff can be removed
with portage-unmerge. What do you guys think?

Pete

Re: [gentoo-dev] interactive packages?

[Achim Gottinger]

Pete Gavin wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I was wondering... Is it required that an ebuild script be completely
> non-interactive?

Yes, otherwise there would be no autobuild.

> I have a few ideas for the kernel configuration
> scripts. I think it might be cool for the for the ebuild to ask the
> installer if he/she wants to load a .config file from somewhere else, then
> run make menuconfig. That way all the modules and stuff can be removed
> with portage-unmerge.

You can do this.
After running "ebuild linux.... unpack" cd to
/tmp/portage/linux.../work/linux
run "make menuconfig/xconfig"
Then continue with ebuild linux... compile

Another possibility would be using the "config" function in ebuild. This was
normaly intedet to be used
for an opional additional configuration-layer. And should normaly modify the
package configuration
files from templates/databses whatever. Normaly this functions hsould be
called after pkg_merge.
But since we have no configuration layer right now and config is only used by
a few packages (for example
qmail runs config-fast from within the config function) we could use the
config function for such an
interactive thing.
Another solution could be using a USE variable to decide if the manual
configuration you described should be
run or a variable that just triggers if a private config file should be used
instead of the default one. Or we could make a sepearate kernel package that
does these manual steps.

But what do you think about that. The kernel ebuild looks if a file (for
example /etc/kernel/[version].config) exists. If so it uses this instead of
the default one.
If you want to configure the kernel for the first time you can do it as I
described above. The copy the .config file to /etc/kernel/[version].config
and the next time you compile the kernel your private config file gets used.

achim~

>
> Pete
>
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://www.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev

Re: [gentoo-dev] interactive packages?

[pbg1854]

Ok...

How about we make an option to ebuild that makes the build process
interactive. We could make that option set a variable in the ebuild
script, which we would then check during the individual steps in the
process.. for example,

if [ "${INTERACTIVE}" ]; then
	make menuconfig
else
	cp "${FILESDIR}/config-${KV}" ${WORKDIR}/linux/.config
	yes "" | make oldconfig
fi

Then you could run ebuild -i merge or something like that.

A few notes:
I like using make oldconfig, because it automatically takes care of
autoconf.h, and version.h for you, and makes sure everything is
configured right. I'd use yes "" | make oldconfig in the
non-interactive version, that way if there are any variables missing
in the .config file, they will get the default value.

I also thought it would be a good idea if the kernels were installed
with a suffix determining the version of the kernel,
i.e. bzImage-2.4.0 rather than just bzImage; that way multiple kernels
can be installed at the same time. I like to do this, especially when
installing a new kernel, in case the new one won't boot or has some
kind of bug in it, I can go back to the old one. Then you could merge
the new kernel, reboot, and unmerge the old one after you're satisfied
the new one works.

If you want, I'll try to modify the ebuild script to add interactive
building support, and work on a sample kernel ebuild. Adding
interactive support shouldn't require any modifications in the
packages, I'm pretty sure.

Oh... and one more thing... I'm having problems w/ the make check
stage while building glibc-2.2.1. I'm trying to figure out why right
now. It just says "Timed out" or something like that. I'll give you
more info after I run make check again.

Pete

On Mon, Feb 05, 2001 at 03:03:38PM +0100, Achim Gottinger wrote:
> Pete Gavin wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > I was wondering... Is it required that an ebuild script be completely
> > non-interactive?
> 
> Yes, otherwise there would be no autobuild.
> 
> > I have a few ideas for the kernel configuration
> > scripts. I think it might be cool for the for the ebuild to ask the
> > installer if he/she wants to load a .config file from somewhere else, then
> > run make menuconfig. That way all the modules and stuff can be removed
> > with portage-unmerge.
> 
> You can do this.
> After running "ebuild linux.... unpack" cd to
> /tmp/portage/linux.../work/linux
> run "make menuconfig/xconfig"
> Then continue with ebuild linux... compile
> 
> Another possibility would be using the "config" function in ebuild. This was
> normaly intedet to be used
> for an opional additional configuration-layer. And should normaly modify the
> package configuration
> files from templates/databses whatever. Normaly this functions hsould be
> called after pkg_merge.
> But since we have no configuration layer right now and config is only used by
> a few packages (for example
> qmail runs config-fast from within the config function) we could use the
> config function for such an
> interactive thing.
> Another solution could be using a USE variable to decide if the manual
> configuration you described should be
> run or a variable that just triggers if a private config file should be used
> instead of the default one. Or we could make a sepearate kernel package that
> does these manual steps.
> 
> But what do you think about that. The kernel ebuild looks if a file (for
> example /etc/kernel/[version].config) exists. If so it uses this instead of
> the default one.
> If you want to configure the kernel for the first time you can do it as I
> described above. The copy the .config file to /etc/kernel/[version].config
> and the next time you compile the kernel your private config file gets used.
> 
> achim~
> 
> >
> > Pete
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gentoo-dev mailing list
> > gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> > http://www.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://www.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev

Re: [gentoo-dev] interactive packages?

[Achim Gottinger]

pbg1854@garnet.acns.fsu.edu wrote:

> Ok...
>
> How about we make an option to ebuild that makes the build process
> interactive. We could make that option set a variable in the ebuild
> script, which we would then check during the individual steps in the
> process.. for example,
>
> if [ "${INTERACTIVE}" ]; then
>         make menuconfig
> else
>         cp "${FILESDIR}/config-${KV}" ${WORKDIR}/linux/.config
>         yes "" | make oldconfig
> fi

Thats what I ment by the USE variable method.

>
> Then you could run ebuild -i merge or something like that.
>

We do not use flags for ebuild at the moment. Maybe in future

>
> A few notes:
> I like using make oldconfig, because it automatically takes care of
> autoconf.h, and version.h for you, and makes sure everything is
> configured right. I'd use yes "" | make oldconfig in the
> non-interactive version, that way if there are any variables missing
> in the .config file, they will get the default value.

That sounds good. I think I saw that option last week in some magazine.

>
>
> I also thought it would be a good idea if the kernels were installed
> with a suffix determining the version of the kernel,
> i.e. bzImage-2.4.0 rather than just bzImage; that way multiple kernels
> can be installed at the same time. I like to do this, especially when
> installing a new kernel, in case the new one won't boot or has some
> kind of bug in it, I can go back to the old one. Then you could merge
> the new kernel, reboot, and unmerge the old one after you're satisfied
> the new one works.

But what if you configure manual and have different kernels of the same version?

>
>
> If you want, I'll try to modify the ebuild script to add interactive
> building support, and work on a sample kernel ebuild. Adding
> interactive support shouldn't require any modifications in the
> packages, I'm pretty sure.
>
> Oh... and one more thing... I'm having problems w/ the make check
> stage while building glibc-2.2.1. I'm trying to figure out why right
> now. It just says "Timed out" or something like that. I'll give you
> more info after I run make check again.

Hmm, sounds like LFS <-> low latency problem. I saw that over here once but at
that time
I had a lot of parallel build processes running.

>
>

achim~

>
> Pete
>
> On Mon, Feb 05, 2001 at 03:03:38PM +0100, Achim Gottinger wrote:
> > Pete Gavin wrote:
> >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I was wondering... Is it required that an ebuild script be completely
> > > non-interactive?
> >
> > Yes, otherwise there would be no autobuild.
> >
> > > I have a few ideas for the kernel configuration
> > > scripts. I think it might be cool for the for the ebuild to ask the
> > > installer if he/she wants to load a .config file from somewhere else, then
> > > run make menuconfig. That way all the modules and stuff can be removed
> > > with portage-unmerge.
> >
> > You can do this.
> > After running "ebuild linux.... unpack" cd to
> > /tmp/portage/linux.../work/linux
> > run "make menuconfig/xconfig"
> > Then continue with ebuild linux... compile
> >
> > Another possibility would be using the "config" function in ebuild. This was
> > normaly intedet to be used
> > for an opional additional configuration-layer. And should normaly modify the
> > package configuration
> > files from templates/databses whatever. Normaly this functions hsould be
> > called after pkg_merge.
> > But since we have no configuration layer right now and config is only used by
> > a few packages (for example
> > qmail runs config-fast from within the config function) we could use the
> > config function for such an
> > interactive thing.
> > Another solution could be using a USE variable to decide if the manual
> > configuration you described should be
> > run or a variable that just triggers if a private config file should be used
> > instead of the default one. Or we could make a sepearate kernel package that
> > does these manual steps.
> >
> > But what do you think about that. The kernel ebuild looks if a file (for
> > example /etc/kernel/[version].config) exists. If so it uses this instead of
> > the default one.
> > If you want to configure the kernel for the first time you can do it as I
> > described above. The copy the .config file to /etc/kernel/[version].config
> > and the next time you compile the kernel your private config file gets used.
> >
> > achim~
> >
> > >
> > > Pete
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > gentoo-dev mailing list
> > > gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> > > http://www.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gentoo-dev mailing list
> > gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> > http://www.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
>
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://www.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev