On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 8:58 PM, Allan McRae <[email protected]> wrote: > Paul Mattal wrote: >> >> Giovanni Scafora wrote: >>> >>> 2009/12/6, Allan McRae <[email protected]>: >>>> >>>> It is as simple as mkarchroot to make the chroot and makechrootpkg to >>>> build >>>> the package (providing the path to the chroot as an arguement). >>>> >>>> Making a chroot for the opposite architecture is slightly more >>>> difficult, >>>> but I can provide patches if needed. >>> >>> mkarchroot to make the chroot and makechrootpkg to build is very sample. >>> I think that patches are not necessary... >> >> I agree that it's pretty simple, but not simple enough to have removed the >> barrier to everyone doing it. So why not make it easier and get rid of more >> of the mystery? >> >> Let's start at the beginning, with the recommended command for creating >> chroots: >> >> sudo mkarchroot -C <pacman.conf> -M <makepkg.conf> <chrootdir>/root base >> base-devel sudo >> >> For starters, I have to trust mkarchroot pretty well not to have any bugs, >> because I'm sudoing it. > > I'll never understand why people are more scared about their root filesystem > being damaged when you can easily recover that using pacman. All our > db-scripts could destroy your /home/<user> data which is much more difficult > to recover from backups but I bet you never second guess them. > >> Then I need to find the pacman.conf and makepkg.conf. > > That is optional. But most people want to keep their makepkg.conf for the > PACKAGER variable and MAKEFLAGS. > >> Then there's the chrootdir/root--- now do I create that first or not? How >> much of it? > > No idea... my guess is that "mkdir -p" is used, but I have always created > <chrootdir>/ > >> Who's going to own the stuff in there? > > It is a system chroot, so files are owned by whoever owns the corresponding > files in the packages your are installing. > >> What stuff will it put in there? Where will it keep the differencing data >> for the unionfs partition (so I can be sure to have enough disk around)? > > Everything is in <chrootdir>. <chrootdir>/rw for the difference data and > the union is created in <chrootdir>/union > >> Then I should decide-- if I have i686 and x86_64 boxes, is it better to do >> all my builds on 1 machine, or on separate boxes? Can I build i686 on >> x86_64? Can I build x86_64 on i686? If I'm going to set all this up, I'm >> probably going to set it up on several machines-- how can I do that easily? > > Up to you... I build for x86_64 and i686 on my i686 comp (running x86_64 > kernel). I know many people build for i686 on x86_64. I used to have a > separate build machine for x86_64. All combinations can work. > >> I'm not saying people can't/won't/shouldn't do this. I'm saying it's not a >> particularly kept-simple part of a distro that prides itself on keeping >> things simple. People will do it if they trust it and it's simple and >> elegant, just like the rest of Arch. > > In all honesty, I rarely ever create a new chroot but that is definitely the > most difficult part of the lot. You should only need to create a chroot > once. My workflow goes: > > update chroot: > sudo mkarchroot -u /home/stable-i686/root/ > > build package: > sudo makechrootpkg -c -r /home/stable-i686/ > > Done. Alias them to "mar" and "mcp" and possibly add them to the NOPASSWD > section of your sudoers file and the process will become even simpler... > > > For soname bumps it is slightly more complicated. > build package with library bump and install in rw layer: > sudo makechrootpkg -c -r /home/stable-i686/ -- -i > > then, build next package against new library from installed package: > sudo makechrootpkg -r /home/stable-i686/ > > > The creation of the chroot could be simpler, but I'm not sure we can make > the building steps much simpler without removing the flexibility of the > tools. > > Allan >
I have an helper script to manage my many chroots (testing, non-testing, i686, x86_64). It's somewhat trivial but I could post it if someone's interested.
