Re: [gentoo-user] Simplified creation of ebuilds

Re: [gentoo-user] Simplified creation of ebuilds

[Daniel Pielmeier]

2009/1/13 Frank Schwidom <schwidom@gmx.net>:
> im searching for a tool, which can create an ebuild of every download
> location. Is there any known tool?

There are many. The most powerful is the combination of yourbrain,
readdoc and $EDITOR ;-)

-- 
Regards,
Daniel

Re: [gentoo-user] Simplified creation of ebuilds

[Albert Hopkins]

On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 12:58 +0000, Frank Schwidom wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> im searching for a tool, which can create an ebuild of every download
> location. Is there any known tool?

Although your description itself is a bit ambiguous I'll assume you
meant: Given download location A is there a tool which I could pass A as
a parameter and have it automatically create an ebuild for it.

This requirement has a number of problems:

     1. The tool has no way of knowing what the download is or does.  It
        could probably get that info from the README (if there is one),
        but that's human-readable free text and is not easily
        machine-readable.
     2. The tool would need to know the license.  Again this can kinda
        be automated if there is a COPYING file, but you have the same
        restrictions as above.
     3. The tool would need to know compile-time and run-time
        dependencies.  Assuming you also want to automate that, the
        system must at least know the download locations of its
        dependencies. This is almost impossible to automate.
     4. The tool would need to know how to build the package.  There are
        many ways to do this (autoconf, cmake, xmkmf, eggs, gems, etc.).
        And all these utilities have their quirks which cannot be known
        to an automated tool.
     5. The system would need to know what patches, USE flags, CFLAGS,
        configure options to use for the build process.  The system must
        also know how to "massage" these options so that they fit into
        the overall Gentoo way of doing things.
     6. The system must know what steps to perform in the "install" and
        "post-install" process.  This varies from package to package and
        the only true way of knowing is through trial and error.

OTOH, portage comes with a lot of tools to help "automate" ebuild
writing.  They have sandbox, the portage API, automagically unpacking
archives in many different formats, automated patching, the mirror://
syntax, .eclasse's for common tasks/schemes, etc. etc.  All the stuff
that *can* be easily automated has already been automated.

So yes, one would write a tool to half-ass do what you want, and you
will spend as much time, if not more, wrangling with the
automated .ebuild to actually get it to work.  That's why package
maintainers make the big bucks ;-)

-a

[gentoo-user] Simplified creation of ebuilds

[Frank Schwidom]

Hi,

im searching for a tool, which can create an ebuild of every download
location. Is there any known tool?

Regards

Re: [gentoo-user] Simplified creation of ebuilds

[Momesso Andrea]

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On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 12:58:37PM +0000, Frank Schwidom wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> im searching for a tool, which can create an ebuild of every download
> location. Is there any known tool?
> 
> Regards
> 
I find this [1] tool to be very useful.

[1] http://devmanual.gentoo.org/

TopperH

===========================
Momesso Andrea
http://topperh.blogspot.com
===========================

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