Michael Haubenwallner wrote:
Hi Dag,
Dag Sverre Seljebotn wrote:
Just stumbled over Gentoo prefix and it seems very exciting (see my
usecase below). My question:
You're welcome!
Is it possible to use the host system's bash/gcc/... when having a
Gentoo prefix on Mac or Linux? I.e. a system for setting up software
which doesn't have *too* much redundancy with the host system. One would
then set PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, MANPATH etc. to use it as an overlay
over the host system.
While it should be "possible" to some degree to do this, we can not recommend
and of course not really support this - although you might get hints for
specific
problems here and there.
Thanks for the input, it's very helpful.
First hint: Do _not_ use LD_LIBRARY_PATH (on a regular basis) for various
reasons.
I keep seeing this statement repeated on the web, but somehow always
feel the reasons given don't apply in my usecase (I might of course be
wrong..). And using LD_LIBRARY_PATH is incredibly convenient for a
number of reasons: It allows moving directories around, moving programs
to our cluster for execution without recompiling, ship a binary tarball
to others with the same system.
I realize people have strong opinions about this. Please, I don't want
to start any flamewars. (In particular I don't feel strongly for arguing
about one vs. the other, just saying that I'm currently a happy
LD_LIBRARY_PATH user.)
<snip>
- Need to distribute software fast and iteratively to coworkers on the
other side of the world with a totally different setup
- Linux, Mac, Solaris, Windows...
Third hint:
Having that many different systems and users feels like becoming a maintenance
nightmare when trying to use as much as possible packages from the host system.
Something that might help is the simplicity of the packages I want to
deploy, but I do see your point. Others have already taken this approach
though, such as Sage (http://sagemath.org) and it works pretty well.
(Well, there's no Windows.)
It is a weakness shared with the *current* approach used by pretty much
everybody, which is to provide my package, list the 15 dependencies, and
have people sort it out by themselves -- which is a major waste of time
(to make an understatement, not all scientists are experts in building
software). To the point that people rewrite complicated stuff themselves
just to avoid the dependencies...
(I live in a world where people just don't have root access to their
boxes. Using package managers to install software only works if the
software is stable and one can ask sysadmins to do it and wait some
days; which drastically lengthens the turnaround time.)
Another alternative is writing packages for Sagemath --
http://sagemath.org. I already know that the Gentoo community don't
particularly care for the Sagemath approach though :-) :
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=240622
Thanks for the input, I'll just have to see where this takes me...
Dag Sverre
