On 09/12/2018 03:41 PM, Ken Moffat via blfs-dev wrote:
On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 03:30:34PM -0500, Bruce Dubbs via blfs-dev wrote:
What I want to do is give new users an idea of what to build first to flesh
out their LFS systems into something usable.
I don't have an opinion on whether or not this is worthwhile, just
questions / remarks about some of the items.
Thanks!
Disk Management
parted-3.2 (for partprobe)
LVM2
Are these two necessary ?
For gpt I prefer gdisk.
It depends on how you define necessary. parted is how you get partprobe
and that is needed if you want a new partition recognized on the boot
drive without rebooting.
Actually I prefer gdisk also, but fdisk from LFS can do msdos partitions
as well so I felt gdisk was redundant.
General Utilities
lsof-4.91
libtirpc
And again, I find lsof of limited usefulness - maybe I'm missing a
common requirement for *new* users of BLFS.
I agree that it may not be a 'essential' utility, but it is nice if you
do needed it. Perhaps it shouldn't be here.
System Utilities
cpio-2.12 (for building initrd)
[snip]
I assume initrds are for encrypted partitions ? On recent intel
machines, you might want to include the firmware section (also
needed or ATI video drivers, and might be useful for wireless.
No, is is needed in our 'About initramfs' and 'About Firmware' sections.
It has nothing to do with encryption. I agree that those sections
should be included.
Networking
dhcpcd-7.0.8
net-tools-cvs_20101030
ntp-4.2.8p12
LWP::Protocol::https-6.07 (Perl Module)
Just a remark that the dependency is excessive (from memory,
probably only a couple of the modules in the chain) and is on my
list for fixing in the perl-modules branch.
We have LWP::Protocol::https as required for ntp. I did not list the
LWP dependencies.
[snip]
mailx-12.5
Do people really need mailx ? And I thought it needed _old_ ssl ?
I dropped it because of that a while ago, and replaced it with a
bash script for my fcron mail.
I find it useful in my scripts. For instance in one of the currency
scripts I have:
exec ( "echo '$message' | mailx -r $from -s '$subject' $to" );
And bind utilities ? I run unbound on desktops, it's not just for
servers.
bind utils is for dig, host, and nslookup.
Servers
postfix-3.3.1
Berkeley DB-5.3.28
libnsl-1.2.0
rpcsvc-proto-1.4
libtirpc-1.1.4 (listed above)
and icu to quieten log messages
OK. It was not listed as recommended, but other packages do recommend it.
Graphics
xorg-7
fontconfig-2.13.1
freetype-2.9.1
libpng-1.6.35
which-2.21 (listed above)
harfbuzz-1.8.8
icu-62.1
glib-2.58.0
pcre-8.42
libxslt-1.1.32
docbook-xml-4.5
docbook-xsl-1.79.2
sgml-common-0.6.3
libxml2-2.9.8
UnZip-6.0 (listed above)
I'm not sure that harfbuzz, glib, or pcre2 are needed when bringing
up a basic Xorg. I build libxslt and the docbook stuff early, for
editing, but the rest get installed after I'm able to run fluxbox.
And on the subject of Xorg - maybe drop twm (personally, I would
drop xterm and legacy fonts, but you know that ;)
Harfbuzz may not be required, but we recommend it for freetype. The
others flow from harfbuzz. I didn't list the individual xorg packages,
but I agree that for most people the legacy fonts are not needed.
What I had in mind was to minimize situations where users might need to
rebuild packages when they go on to build DEs like xfce or even kde.
libdrm-2.4.94
Mako-1.0.4 (Perl module)
Beaker-1.10.0
funcsigs-1.0.2
MarkupSafe-1.0
Python-2.7.15
If you hadn't mentioned Python2 as a dep of usbutils, I would have
questioned why it was in 'basic'. Needed at the moment for rustc
(that might change, since it might be that the weirdnesses I've seen
in scripted rustc builds are common to both versions of python), and
obviously still needed for later packages.
Python2 and Mako are required for mesa.
libvdpau-1.1.1
wayland-protocols-1.15
libxml2-2.9.8 (see above)
I guess wayland-protocols are for kde or gnome, not sure how useful
they are in other desktop environments.
Again, I don't want users to have to rebuild packages. If a few are
unneeded now, then it really doesn't hurt much.
LLVM-6.0.1 (only required for Gallium3D, r300, and radeonsi
drivers and for the llvmpipe software rasterizer.)
Pixman-0.34.0
libepoxy-1.5.2
mtdev-1.1.5
(Appropriate drivers for HW)
fluxbox-1.3.7
For new users, should we mention alternative editors ? I can
remember that vim took me a while to get to grips with and I
started with joe, other peopel seem to like nano.
Diving in and learning vim is, IMO, best. A crutch like joe of nano may
be OK for casual users, but I do not want to encourage them.
More generally, this is mostly about bringing up Xorg. I'll bet
most BLFS users running Xorg don't run Postfix.
You are probably right, but as a learning experience, users should have
an MTA available for scripts and fcron.
My overall purpose is to make recommendations to new users. Many of the
packages I listed will be completely new to a lot of users (especially
my students). It is not like LFS though. I'm not recommending users
have to build everything listed. If the build is a server, then xorg is
not needed at all. I think that xorg+dependencies is about half of the
above packages. Without that, even a new user could build everything in
just a few hours after LFS.
-- Bruce
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