[gentoo-embedded] frontend needed to make Gentoo/embedded a viability

[gentoo-embedded] frontend needed to make Gentoo/embedded a viability

[Mike Frysinger]

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so i was tooling along the road thinking about what it would take for people 
to sit down and use Gentoo/embedded for the target ... currently we have misc 
ways of doing this by hand (install mask/etc...), but it tends to be error 
prone and it requires the end user to know more than they should about the 
portage environment

what would help here is a frontend ... something like uClinux or Open Embedded 
where a menu system allows the user to select the packages to install into 
the target image and when they're done, they simply type 'make' ... wait a 
bit and they're left with images that they can take and flash onto the target 
board

so really, a friendly frontend for the user to select the characteristics of 
the system, and then a backend to take that config and use emerge to build 
everything and generate an image ... would make it easy to create stock board 
descriptions too ...

what do you guys think ?  stupid idea ?  good idea waiting for a champion ?
-mike

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Re: [gentoo-embedded] frontend needed to make Gentoo/embedded a viability

[Kevin Winter]

On 8/12/06, Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:
> so i was tooling along the road thinking about what it would take for people
> to sit down and use Gentoo/embedded for the target ... currently we have misc
> ways of doing this by hand (install mask/etc...), but it tends to be error
> prone and it requires the end user to know more than they should about the
> portage environment
>
> what would help here is a frontend ... something like uClinux or Open Embedded
> where a menu system allows the user to select the packages to install into
> the target image and when they're done, they simply type 'make' ... wait a
> bit and they're left with images that they can take and flash onto the target
> board
>
> so really, a friendly frontend for the user to select the characteristics of
> the system, and then a backend to take that config and use emerge to build
> everything and generate an image ... would make it easy to create stock board
> descriptions too ...
>
> what do you guys think ?  stupid idea ?  good idea waiting for a champion ?
> -mike

I think thats an excellent idea. The current approach seems to use
ROOT= in order to install packages.  I really like the idea of a
gentoo version of uclibc and such, almost like the linux kernel.

I'm currently planning to use embedded gentoo on an embedded project
(x86 board though), and a menu-driven selection of optional packages
would greatly simplify the process of generating new images.

Just my non-developer two cents.

~Kevin
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Open Source, Open Mind
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Re: [gentoo-embedded] frontend needed to make Gentoo/embedded a viability

[Mike Frysinger]

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On Saturday 12 August 2006 20:13, Kevin Winter wrote:
> I think thats an excellent idea. The current approach seems to use
> ROOT= in order to install packages.  I really like the idea of a
> gentoo version of uclibc and such, almost like the linux kernel.

the idea is that the backend would still do this with emerge via ROOT and what 
not, users would just not have to do every package by hand

think what crossdev does for cross-compilers ... it simply emerges the 
packages with the proper env vars set
-mike

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Re: [gentoo-embedded] frontend needed to make Gentoo/embedded a viability

[Yuri Vasilevski]

Hi,

On Sat, 12 Aug 2006 19:50:39 -0400
Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:

> so i was tooling along the road thinking about what it would take for
> people to sit down and use Gentoo/embedded for the target ...
> currently we have misc ways of doing this by hand (install
> mask/etc...), but it tends to be error prone and it requires the end
> user to know more than they should about the portage environment
> 
> what would help here is a frontend ... something like uClinux or Open
> Embedded where a menu system allows the user to select the packages
> to install into the target image and when they're done, they simply
> type 'make' ... wait a bit and they're left with images that they can
> take and flash onto the target board

The way I see this, is that this is covered by buildroot, so it would be
duplicating things at some level to do this with gentoo.

> so really, a friendly frontend for the user to select the
> characteristics of the system, and then a backend to take that config
> and use emerge to build everything and generate an image ... would
> make it easy to create stock board descriptions too ...

But I think it would be really nice if we could teach catalyst to
generate embedded images from some "board" spec files.
And once this works, a fancy spec file editor with a nice gui could be
written if needed.

> what do you guys think ?  stupid idea ?  good idea waiting for a
> champion ? -mike

Yuri.
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Re: [gentoo-embedded] frontend needed to make Gentoo/embedded a viability

[Mike Frysinger]

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On Saturday 12 August 2006 22:38, Yuri Vasilevski wrote:
> Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > so i was tooling along the road thinking about what it would take for
> > people to sit down and use Gentoo/embedded for the target ...
> > currently we have misc ways of doing this by hand (install
> > mask/etc...), but it tends to be error prone and it requires the end
> > user to know more than they should about the portage environment
> >
> > what would help here is a frontend ... something like uClinux or Open
> > Embedded where a menu system allows the user to select the packages
> > to install into the target image and when they're done, they simply
> > type 'make' ... wait a bit and they're left with images that they can
> > take and flash onto the target board
>
> The way I see this, is that this is covered by buildroot, so it would be
> duplicating things at some level to do this with gentoo.

yes, we'd be replacing everything buildroot does that Gentoo doesnt already 
do ... buildroot is really:
 - cross-compiler selection / build
 - package selection / build
 - image generation

now, we already have the first part with crossdev ... the second part we 
mostly have, just need a more user friendly interface

image generation isnt that big of a deal ... that's like running 
`mkfs.<whatever>` on a directory

> > so really, a friendly frontend for the user to select the
> > characteristics of the system, and then a backend to take that config
> > and use emerge to build everything and generate an image ... would
> > make it easy to create stock board descriptions too ...
>
> But I think it would be really nice if we could teach catalyst to
> generate embedded images from some "board" spec files.
> And once this works, a fancy spec file editor with a nice gui could be
> written if needed.

we could take that route of teaching catalyst how to do cross-compiling rather 
than reinventing the wheel
-mike

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Re: [gentoo-embedded] frontend needed to make Gentoo/embedded a viability

[Ned Ludd]

On Sat, 2006-08-12 at 19:50 -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> so i was tooling along the road thinking about what it would take for people 
> to sit down and use Gentoo/embedded for the target ... currently we have misc 
> ways of doing this by hand (install mask/etc...), but it tends to be error 
> prone and it requires the end user to know more than they should about the 
> portage environment
> 
> what would help here is a frontend ... something like uClinux or Open Embedded 
> where a menu system allows the user to select the packages to install into 
> the target image and when they're done, they simply type 'make' ... wait a 
> bit and they're left with images that they can take and flash onto the target 
> board
> 
> so really, a friendly frontend for the user to select the characteristics of 
> the system, and then a backend to take that config and use emerge to build 
> everything and generate an image ... would make it easy to create stock board 
> descriptions too ...
> 
> what do you guys think ?  stupid idea ? 

Not silly.. I'd tie it into (lx)dialog/Xdialog and skip anything to do 
with catalyst as it tends to be cumbersome for embedded use (plus GNAP 
already exists). using the classic dialog method will provide the most 
familiarity to what buildroot users already expect. 
Then again I'm rather also fond of using single meta ebuilds to handle 
everything but that requires calling emerge from within an ebuild.

> good idea waiting for a champion ?

pretty much..



-- 
Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-embedded] frontend needed to make Gentoo/embedded a viability

[Thierry Carrez]

Ned Ludd wrote:

>> what do you guys think ?  stupid idea ? 
> 
> Not silly.. I'd tie it into (lx)dialog/Xdialog and skip anything to do 
> with catalyst as it tends to be cumbersome for embedded use (plus GNAP 
> already exists). using the classic dialog method will provide the most 
> familiarity to what buildroot users already expect. 

Yes, I would stay away from catalyst. GNAP makes extensive uses of it
and inherits its design/drawbacks : you'll probably want something
smaller and less integrated. Using catalyst you would end up with
something like GNAP anyway :P

-- 
Koon
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Re: [gentoo-embedded] frontend needed to make Gentoo/embedded a viability

[wireless]

Mike Frysinger wrote:
> so i was tooling along the road thinking about what it would take for people 
> to sit down and use Gentoo/embedded for the target ... currently we have misc 
> ways of doing this by hand (install mask/etc...), but it tends to be error 
> prone and it requires the end user to know more than they should about the 
> portage environment
> 
> what would help here is a frontend ... something like uClinux or Open Embedded 
> where a menu system allows the user to select the packages to install into 
> the target image and when they're done, they simply type 'make' ... wait a 
> bit and they're left with images that they can take and flash onto the target 
> board
> 
> so really, a friendly frontend for the user to select the characteristics of 
> the system, and then a backend to take that config and use emerge to build 
> everything and generate an image ... would make it easy to create stock board 
> descriptions too ...
> 
> what do you guys think ?  stupid idea ?  good idea waiting for a champion ?
> -mike

Good idea.

You should take a look at LTIB. It operates very similar to
'make menuconfig' and covers several different platforms (arm,
ppc, coldfire) and could be extended to support many more
processors and BSPs (board Support Packages).
It's functionality might give you some ideas on a more general
purpose gui/menu system to support embedded-gentoo on
a variety of platforms. Even if you find a reason or two
not to use LTIB, looking at LTIB might give you some ideas
and code snippets......

The concept of making the package somewhat similar to
'make menuconfig'  is very compelling and very comfortable
to build images and boot new boards.

It is open source:GPL:

https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/ltib#options

http://www.bitshrine.org/autodocs/LtibFaq.html#ref_5

http://www.bitshrine.org/

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?nodeId=01272686886605

Regardless of which way embedded-gentoo goes, a gui/menu
system to unify all/most of the methods/packages/images is
a good idea. Organizations and projects that look
organized attract more members (& funding). Using a gui/menu
system for embedded-gentoo will make it look much more
mature as an embedded choice, in my opinion.


hth,
James

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