Torsten Vollmann wrote:
<snip>
I know it is not quite possible to arrange the whole book in a way that you
can go through it step by step and be able to compile all packages this way,
<snip>
First of all chapter 12 is sorted alphabetically, which is mainly a good thing
and LFS does this, too - where possible. But with a little modification most
of the inner-chapter requirements that I'm aware of are met and I think it is
more easy to comprehend 'cause you don't have to jump back and forth:
<snip>
While I can see from LFS' perspective ordering the initial packages by
dependency (as it could not be done rationally otherwise), BLFS is a
different sort of book. LFS' goal is to produce a base system by
following a step-by-step procedure - hence being able to click next all
the time without jumping all over; it is assumed that you will install
all of the packages in the book. BLFS instead states that the book
isn't meant to be followed sequentially, though there are certain
packages that you will most likely need to install; it is a book geared
more towards someone who says "I want to install package-x" and shows
the person how to do so.
I don't build BLFS sequentially (and in fact only a small useful subset
of it). I want to install those, and only those, packages that I will
need on my system; to that end, I would not install all of the 'General
Libraries' just because they might be needed by a package I want to
install later in the book.
Instead, I find the package I want to build (in whatever chapter it
happens to reside), and perform a simple depth-first tree traversal on
its dependencies, installing the terminal nodes (if it isn't already
installed) and returning back towards the goal (installing the desired
package).
For example, I'm fresh out of LFS and want to install Xorg; I find it in
ch.25 and notice that it requires libpng and fontconfig. So:
- click the libpng link
- no dependencies, so install it.
- click the back button.
- click the fontconfig link
- depends on freetype and expat
- click the freetype link
- no dependencies, so install it.
- back up
- click the expat link
- no dependencies, so install it.
- back up
- no more dependencies, so install fontconfig
- back up
- no more dependencies, so install Xorg
With this sort of idea in mind, it's easier to find a package if it is
listed alphanumerically.
The chapter headings seem very logically ordered to me. It may not
always be the case, but utilities generally depend on libraries; not the
other way around. This seems more like a make work project than an
improvement to me, but then perhaps it really is the case that people
install all of the BLFS packages. So many packages that would just sit
there unused and possibly hogging cycles.. it would feel like Windows.
Regards,
Jeremy.
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