On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 00:02:11 +0000 Stuart Herbert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was building a RedHat Enterprise Server box this afternoon, and it
> set me thinking a bit. For years now, RedHat have split a lot of
> their packages into two sets ... a set containing what's needed at
> runtime to use the package, and another 'devel' package containing
> header files etc which are only needed for building software.
>
> One thing that it's really nice to do with a server is build it with
> no compilers etc installed. The less that's on there, the less there
> is to maintain, upgrade, be reused by the black hats, etc etc.
>
> RedHat makes that very easy to do. Gentoo supports binary packages,
> but we don't split out the runtime stuff from the type of files which
> RedHat put in their 'devel' packages.
>
> My question is - why not?
Personal opinion: This splitting (and all the other subpackaging) is one
of the main reasons why I don't use redhat (or other binary distros)
anymore. I can see the use (so don't try to convince me with examples),
but personally I hate it. If we would go on and change the main tree to
split packages this way I'd probably leave Gentoo too (this isn't meant
as a threat in any way). Don't know how other people feel about this.
> I have an idea about how we could go about implementing this. Rather
> than adding (f.ex) a libjpeg-devel package, we could enhance Portage
> to support a second image directory. Ebuilds could then put runtime
> files into ${D} as normal, and 'devel' files into (f.ex) ${I} (it's a
> shame that ${D} was chosen for the image directory ;-)
And then what? You have the files separated in the sandbox, but how are
you going to use that? Generate two binary packages, only merge the
devel stuff with FEATURES=devel-files, ...? For the latter there is
already INSTALL_MASK to avoid installing unwanted files (new feature).
For the first I don't really see the use unless you also change the
dependency system.
Btw you don't really need to put the logic in the ebuilds, development
stuff can nearly always be matched with a simple find command (headers,
static libs.
And finally (as you could have expected) you're not the first with this
idea, the embedded people have harassed us about this for a while
already, so far with no success. Maybe if you combine forces you can
convince us.
Marius
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