[gentoo-dev] making metadata.xml pay off and removing pkg_postinst crud

[gentoo-dev] making metadata.xml pay off and removing pkg_postinst crud

[Mike Frysinger]

right now we're doing all our informative output inside pkg_postinst simply 
because it's the last function run by emerge when emerging a new pkg ...
this is really not the reason pkg_postinst was created (displaying informative 
output to the user), but i havent said anything before because we never had a 
solution to 'fix' the situation ...

but now ive got it !  lets finally use metadata :)
i propose we add a section, maybe call it <howto> or <postinstconfig> or 
something similar, or maybe have a few considering there are a few steps to 
take when properly using some packages ... plus we wouldnt have to worry 
about logging said informative output with some kludge that portage 
implements because the user missed the message as it flew by his screen in a 
multi-merge process ...
we extend the use of '-h' in emerge ...

for example, say i want to know 'howto' setup mysql ...
root@vapier 0 root # emerge --help dev-db/mysql
You might want to run:
ebuild /var/db/pkg/dev-db/mysql-4.0.14/mysql-4.0.14.ebuild config
if this is a new install.
it will auto generate the basic mysql databases for you.

or, i just installed these sexy new X cursors ...
root@vapier 0 root # emerge --help x11-themes/silver-xcursors
To use this set of cursors, edit or create the file ~/.Xdefaults
and add the following line:
Xcursor.theme: Silver

Also, you can change the size by adding a line like:
Xcursor.size: 48

To globally use this set of mouse cursors edit the file:
   /usr/share/cursors/xfree/default/index.theme
and change the line:
   Inherits=[current setting]
to
   Inherits=Silver
Note this will be overruled by a user's ~/.Xdefaults file.

If you experience flickering, try setting the following line in
the Device section of your XF86Config:
Option  "HWCursor"  "false"

if people like the idea, ill put together a bug and/or some portage patches
-mike

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Re: [gentoo-dev] making metadata.xml pay off and removing pkg_postinst crud

[Robin H. Johnson]

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On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 10:00:31PM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> for example, say i want to know 'howto' setup mysql ...
> root@vapier 0 root # emerge --help dev-db/mysql
> You might want to run:
> ebuild /var/db/pkg/dev-db/mysql-4.0.14/mysql-4.0.14.ebuild config
> if this is a new install.
> it will auto generate the basic mysql databases for you.

For pure static data (no if trees OR variables), this would work fine,
but the great majority of the output in pkg_postinst is dynamic.

In your above suggestion, the path to the ebuild is dynamic, so this
either you need to implement some custom parsing for the content.

However that wouldn't work when you want to base the output on an if
statement.
For mod_php, I have this:
if use apache; then
 einfo "Edit /etc/conf.d/apache2 and add \"-D PHP4\""
else
 einfo " \"ebuild /var/db/pkg/dev-php/${PF}/${PF}.ebuild config\""
fi

Furthermore, in your XML system, how do you get einfo/ewarn/eerror
colouring? (raw ansi shouldn't go into XML).

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
E-Mail     : robbat2@orbis-terrarum.net
Home Page  : http://www.orbis-terrarum.net/?l=people.robbat2
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Re: [gentoo-dev] making metadata.xml pay off and removing pkg_postinst crud

[matt c]

>From: "Zack Gilburd" <klasikahl@gentoo.org>
>Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 8:06 PM
>Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 1.4 final against rc's

>This notion has been expressed over and over again -- and it's a very good
>one.  I, too, think that Gentoo should move away from the concept of
>definitive releases.  However, it would be very hard to distinguish
landmark
>releases from eachother without some sort of versioning system.
<snip>

I think that's the point though - Gentoo does not have a versioning system,
nor does it need one. It is an OS in constant metamorphosis. It's like
telling people "I'm 30 years old" - you're not really 30, you're 30 years, 5
months, 2 days, etc.

>I really have no ideas on how else it should be done, but it does need a
>change.  Some users feel obligated to reinstall, and do so needlessly.

I think that's because Gentoo is trying to use a versioning system that is
applied to other "set" operating systems - set implying specific versions of
binaries getting shipped with the packaged OS, and these are updated en
masse each version. To have the latest release you DO have to upgrade with
upgrade CDs or other like ilk.

 The ONLY set packaged OS Gentoo has (AFAIK) are the stages. Perhaps instead
of calling it Gentoo 1.4 it should be something like Gentoo Stage1-1.4, etc.
Gentoo LiveCD-1.4. Change the install documentation to point out that the
install images are the only thing getting changed each version increment,
and that each time they do an --update world they are effectively getting
the latest version of gentoo. Calling it Gentoo 1.4 is a really a misnomer
and is also misleading.

(Puts 2 cents in tip jar)

Matt




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Re: [gentoo-dev] making metadata.xml pay off and removing pkg_postinst crud

[Chris Smith]

On Friday 15 August 2003 14:00, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> but now ive got it !  lets finally use metadata :)
> i propose we add a section, maybe call it <howto> or <postinstconfig> or
> something similar, or maybe have a few considering there are a few steps to
> take when properly using some packages ... plus we wouldnt have to worry
> about logging said informative output with some kludge that portage
> implements because the user missed the message as it flew by his screen in
> a multi-merge process ...
> we extend the use of '-h' in emerge ...

This is a really good idea. Also, over rsync, it only gets updated if it needs 
to be, and the one-off download is going to be tiny.

Lets see... say ~50 words per package, and about 4 chars per word, thats 200 
bytes per package. We now have ~6000 packages (as of the last GWN), so thats 
1,200,000 bytes, or ~1.14 MB. That is a very manageable number. Also, I 
imagine that every metadata.xml won't be updated at the same time, so it will 
be a staggered download.

The <howto> section could even include links to Gentoo (or just general) 
documentation! i.e. hardened-sources could point to the hardened gentoo 
project page. Perhaps even topics in the forum, or the mailing list, where 
users have documented useful info about the package.

Off on a tangent here, perhaps all of our information distributed via rsync, 
could be bzipped? I'm not familiar with rsync, or if it's anything like cvs 
(i.e. unable to handle binaries the way we want), but we could definately 
reduce the download times over rsync (something i've noticed, especially for 
the first rsync done on a system).

Well, better go before I get too far offtopic :o)

Cheers,
Chris.


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Re: [gentoo-dev] making metadata.xml pay off and removing pkg_postinst crud

[Markus Nigbur]

Another problem with adding those userinformation to the metadata.xml file is, that you may have different information regarding every single ebuild. we would need to add some version seperation into the metadata.xml file's "postinfo" section, but this again would make the use of it redundant.
I'd stay with the current solution, playcing this info directly into the ebuilds. we could add an extra function for this kind of information, but i don't think that's needed.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] making metadata.xml pay off and removing pkg_postinst crud

[Paul de Vrieze]

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I like the idea, the biggest problem will be the extra dependencies though. 
Make sure that there are not too many.

I think the best implementation would just be a <postinst> tag with the normal 
version selection attribute, and just have plaintext inside of it. Then 
having that plaintext formatted (wordwrapping, coloring (or starts)) at the 
moment it needs to displayed. You could even just an xsl sheet and xsltproc 
(from libxslt) for it. 

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] making metadata.xml pay off and removing pkg_postinst crud

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Fri, 2003-08-15 at 00:14, Chris Smith wrote:
> The <howto> section could even include links to Gentoo (or just general) 
> documentation! i.e. hardened-sources could point to the hardened gentoo 
> project page. Perhaps even topics in the forum, or the mailing list, where 
> users have documented useful info about the package.

I really like this idea.  It gives quite a bit more information to the
users and isn't too hard to maintain from a developer standpoint.

> Off on a tangent here, perhaps all of our information distributed via rsync, 
> could be bzipped? I'm not familiar with rsync, or if it's anything like cvs 
> (i.e. unable to handle binaries the way we want), but we could definately 
> reduce the download times over rsync (something i've noticed, especially for 
> the first rsync done on a system).

For portage usage, rsync works best with straight text.  This is because
a bzipped file is dramatically different from the previous version if
only one character changed before compression.  The download times, I
believe, are more a product of the actual matching done by rsync than a
product of slow download rates.  I've noticed that a sync is about 100
fold faster on a SCSI RAID array than on an old IDE drive, though both
are on the same Internet connection.  This tells me right away that
bandwidth is not the problem, but rather I/O (and CPU to an extent).

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer, Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] making metadata.xml pay off and removing pkg_postinst crud

[Luke-Jr]

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1. The XML tag shouldn't really be called postinst. Something like <howto> or 
<instructions> looks better for this purpose.
2. Some packages may have different instructions based on the version 
installed. metadata.xml is the same for all versions of a package.

Alternatively, why not add a pkg_instructions function and have 'emerge help 
...' or 'ebuild ... instructions' run that? It could be run after 
pkg_postinst of a normal emerge, also.

On Friday 15 August 2003 02:00 am, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> right now we're doing all our informative output inside pkg_postinst simply
> because it's the last function run by emerge when emerging a new pkg ...
> this is really not the reason pkg_postinst was created (displaying
> informative output to the user), but i havent said anything before because
> we never had a solution to 'fix' the situation ...
>
> but now ive got it !  lets finally use metadata :)
> i propose we add a section, maybe call it <howto> or <postinstconfig> or
> something similar, or maybe have a few considering there are a few steps to
> take when properly using some packages ... plus we wouldnt have to worry
> about logging said informative output with some kludge that portage
> implements because the user missed the message as it flew by his screen in
> a multi-merge process ...
> we extend the use of '-h' in emerge ...
>
> for example, say i want to know 'howto' setup mysql ...
> root@vapier 0 root # emerge --help dev-db/mysql
> You might want to run:
> ebuild /var/db/pkg/dev-db/mysql-4.0.14/mysql-4.0.14.ebuild config
> if this is a new install.
> it will auto generate the basic mysql databases for you.
>
> or, i just installed these sexy new X cursors ...
> root@vapier 0 root # emerge --help x11-themes/silver-xcursors
> To use this set of cursors, edit or create the file ~/.Xdefaults
> and add the following line:
> Xcursor.theme: Silver
>
> Also, you can change the size by adding a line like:
> Xcursor.size: 48
>
> To globally use this set of mouse cursors edit the file:
>    /usr/share/cursors/xfree/default/index.theme
> and change the line:
>    Inherits=[current setting]
> to
>    Inherits=Silver
> Note this will be overruled by a user's ~/.Xdefaults file.
>
> If you experience flickering, try setting the following line in
> the Device section of your XF86Config:
> Option  "HWCursor"  "false"
>
> if people like the idea, ill put together a bug and/or some portage patches
> -mike
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

- -- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] making metadata.xml pay off and removing pkg_postinst crud

[Heinrich Wendel]

I think we can put that in glep #5, metadata.xml extensions:

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0005.html

mfg, Heinrich :)

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Re: [gentoo-dev] making metadata.xml pay off and removing pkg_postinst crud

[Luke-Jr]

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With each new version, there are new LiveCDs, new stages, and new GRPs, IIRC.

On Friday 15 August 2003 03:48 am, matt c wrote:
> From: "Zack Gilburd" <klasikahl@gentoo.org>
>
> >Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 8:06 PM
> >Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 1.4 final against rc's
> >
> >This notion has been expressed over and over again -- and it's a very good
> >one.  I, too, think that Gentoo should move away from the concept of
> >definitive releases.  However, it would be very hard to distinguish
>
> landmark
>
> >releases from eachother without some sort of versioning system.
>
> <snip>
>
> I think that's the point though - Gentoo does not have a versioning system,
> nor does it need one. It is an OS in constant metamorphosis. It's like
> telling people "I'm 30 years old" - you're not really 30, you're 30 years,
> 5 months, 2 days, etc.
>
> >I really have no ideas on how else it should be done, but it does need a
> >change.  Some users feel obligated to reinstall, and do so needlessly.
>
> I think that's because Gentoo is trying to use a versioning system that is
> applied to other "set" operating systems - set implying specific versions
> of binaries getting shipped with the packaged OS, and these are updated en
> masse each version. To have the latest release you DO have to upgrade with
> upgrade CDs or other like ilk.
>
>  The ONLY set packaged OS Gentoo has (AFAIK) are the stages. Perhaps
> instead of calling it Gentoo 1.4 it should be something like Gentoo
> Stage1-1.4, etc. Gentoo LiveCD-1.4. Change the install documentation to
> point out that the install images are the only thing getting changed each
> version increment, and that each time they do an --update world they are
> effectively getting the latest version of gentoo. Calling it Gentoo 1.4 is
> a really a misnomer and is also misleading.
>
> (Puts 2 cents in tip jar)
>
> Matt
>
>
>
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

- -- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org/
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