Re: [gentoo-user] no-emul profiles

[Gevisz <gevisz@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 20 Nov 2014 00:05:30 +0100 Marc Joliet <marcec@gmx.de> wrote:

> Am Wed, 19 Nov 2014 23:09:16 +0200
> schrieb Gevisz <gevisz@gmail.com>:
> 
> > Looking into profile list, I have found out new,
> > at least for me, no-emul profiles. (As far as I
> > remember, they were not there one and a half
> > years ago, when I installed my first Gentoo system.)
> > 
> > I tried to google something about them but have
> > found virtually nothing except for the following
> > wiki page: http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Multilib_System_without_emul-linux_Packages
> > 
> > It is not about profiles at all but I guess that
> > no-emul profile provides the same result while
> > installing the system.
> > 
> > Am I right?
> 
> In short: yes, I think so.
> 
> It Looks to me like a new profile that uses proper multilib (something that
> some Gentoo devs have been working on for several years now, in fact) instead
> of the pre-compiled 32 bit packages (app-emulation/emul-linux-*), so that now,
> finally, (some) packages can be compiled for both 32 and 64 bits. Specifically,
> I think it is explicitly for wine users.
> 
> Actually, I'm mildly excited that proper multilib (at least for amd64) appears
> to be nearing completion, or at least a usable state.
> 
> > If so, I have a few more questions:
> > 
> > Is it stable?
> > 
> > Is it worth to choose it while installing a new Gentoo system?
> 
> No clue about these two, since I haven't tried it, but I've never heard of
> "experimental" profiles,

I have seen such a warning when googling about uclibc profile
(but it is hard to say when this warning was issued).

>  so I don't expect it to be broken (but see below).

> Anyway, I just switched to default/linux/amd64/13.0/no-emul-linux-x86/desktop
> as an experiment and am waiting for emerge @world to finish :) .

Thank you for trying it. :)
 
> So the no-emul-linux-x86 profiles are fairly simple: they unmask the abi_x86_32
> USE flag (at least for enough packages to satisfy wine's dependency tree), mask
> the emul-linux-* packages, and mask some older versions of packages that don't
> have the necessary multilib support.  I needed to upgrade 5 packages, of which
> four (gnutls, texinfo, nettle, and libSM) have open stabilisation bugs.

Does not this mean that it is a bit experimental?

> The one without was wine, but I don't mind in its case.  After that and adding
> lots of abi_x86_32 USE flags, portage was able to sort out all blockers by itself
> and emerge @world started running successfully.
> 
> There is also a corresponding abi_x86_64 USE flag that remains masked, so you
> don't get the full granularity yet, but it will get there eventually :) .

What is still unclear for me (but it is not the question to you but to
the creators of this profile) is the following:

In the wiki page I have mentioned above, is written:
"This document will show how to setup a Gentoo ~amd64 system for this
new way of dealing with 32bit libraries. A stable amd64 system may not
work this way but if the new feature is completely stable, it will be
available to all users eventually." 

That suggests that with the time all these features will be included
into the usual default amd64 profile, and thus amd64 no-emul profile
seems to be somewhat experimental (at least as to my logic :).

If so, will it be abandoned with time or just converge to the default
amd64 profile?

> > Can I expect that in this case I will be able to install
> > and run such applications as, say, wine?
> 
> I would expect so.  The wine ebuilds (at least for version 1.7.x) have supported
> multilib for a while now (just check the changelog), as an alternative to the
> emul-linux-* packages.
> 
> > Thank you.
> 
> HTH

Yes, thank you.