Re: [gentoo-dev] new glep draft: Portage as a secondary package manager

[Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org>]

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On Fri, 6 May 2005 00:09:58 -0500 Brian Harring <ferringb@gentoo.org>
wrote:
| That said, I'll just point at fink's nonstandard prefix for 
| installation as a better example that it *can* be pulled off without 
| all of this 'fire, brimstome, and the apocalypse on earth' cruft 
| people keep throwing about as an arguement it can't work.
| 
| Think about it for a second.  What is the purpose of --prefix, and all
| the other lovely configure installation options?  To configure the 
| source so it'll work in it's intended destination.
| 
| Yes, it doesn't work perfectly across all packages, and not all 
| packages are designed to be flexible in installation (straight 
| makefile hacks come to mind, dev-util/bsdiff for example).  This is 
| why I keep pointing at the parallel of adding a new arch.  You get 
| your core support down, and expand support across the tree as you go.
| 
| In other words, yes, there are technical issues, but I _still_ posit 
| that those issues are experienced by those who want said support, and 
| who are the lucky buggers who have to do the bug squashing.  It's the 
| same damn thing macos encounters, and any new arch, hence my complete 
| lack of understanding for why people are quick to fire off "piss off, 
| it won't work" without looking at the actual issues.

The problem isn't the packages. The problem is the ebuilds.

| > Eh? No, see, we have KEYWORDS, which indicate whether you can use a
| > package on a given arch.
| 
| Dodging my point.  You stated, "if we introduce it, people will expect
| it to actually work".  It's defeatist logic; won't try because people 
| might bitch if they wade into experimental territory and get bit.
| 
| That's the point I was getting at, which you seemed to ignore/not 
| understand.
| 
| Pointing out that people might try an experimental feature and hit 
| issues and bitch as a reason for _not_ doing something is just plain 
| daft.

Except we have an easy way of marking which ebuilds will actually work
with this thing. Why not use it? It's a hell of a lot cleaner, it gives
us better feedback and it makes it easier for the users.

| If you've got a better suggestion, macos probably would love to know 
| of it ;)

Per-ebuild whitelisting, kind of like KEYWORDS. This has the added
advantage of making it easy for additional kinds of install target to be
added at some point.

| So, fink demonstration of --prefix hackery?

If you want a better example, try either SGI or Sun's GNU tools ports.
But they don't use ebuilds either.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Vim, Shell tools, Fluxbox, Cron)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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