Hello Holly, Thanks for the advice. I must say I prefer the original Unix approach of putting all the sources under /usr/src, with the kernel going into /usr/src/sys.
One of the reasons I like to have the unpacked sources for everything on my disk is that the with open source the documentation is so often inadequate. (of course it is not unheard of for commercial products to have woeful documentation as well - which is why there are so many third party books on Windows...) If, on the other hand, you treat the source code as the 'definative' documentation, then by keeping it around I know that there is nothing about my system that I cannot find out, and I never have to resort to trial and error to work out how something works. Plus, of course, there is the added bonus that if the feature you are looking for isn't there, you can add it in. Or if the way something works isn't obvious from the source, it is easy to temporarily add the odd diagnostic. It is also useful when writing new code to be able to look at existing source to make sure you are not re-inventing things and are following best practice. It is amazing how often you find that a library already exists to handle something you were about to code from scratch... In theory I could unpack a tarball, but that is a lot more effort than reading a file with is already available and in a predictable place. For me, being able to do that is one of the main benefits of an open source system. Being free is not the major issue. Regards, DigbyT On Mon, Mar 28, 2005 at 11:54:12AM +0200, Holly Bostick wrote: > Digby Tarvin wrote: > > >However after going through the install process, the only sources which I > >can find in an expected place are the kernel sources. > > > >So the question is, how to I go about making sure that the sources that > >my system is built from reside on my disk, and how do I find them? > > They do reside on your disk; look in /usr/portage/distfiles for the > tarballs. The reason you can find the kernel sources in an "expected > place" is because /usr/src is the standard place to extract kernel > sources, and kernel sources are the only sources that reside in an > extracted state on an average system (unless you're manually compiling a > source tarball outside of Portage control, in which case you know > exactly where the source is extracted anyway). > > The sources for portage-compiled apps don't need to be lying around in > an extracted state except during the compile (during which they are > extracted to /var/temp/portage, I think), but once the compile is > finished, the temp files are removed (naturally), though they will > remain there if the emerge fails, taking up space. However, the original > tarball remains in /usr/portage/distfiles, unless you blow that folder > away to save space (which many of us do, since the only downside of that > is that you will have to download the tarball again if you want to > reinstall that same package/version). > > Alternatively, you can just look in the ebuild or at the package > description on packages.gentoo.org to find the download location of the > tarballs, or the application homepage, and then download the specific > sources you want to look at. There's not necessarily a real "reason" to > have *all* of the sources on your HDD (other than the ones you > specifically want to look at, or preserve for some other reason)-- but, > this being Gentoo, it's up to you how you want to handle the issue (keep > every source, or keep some, or keep none). > > HTH, > Holly > > -- > [email protected] mailing list -- Digby R. S. Tarvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.digbyt.com -- Digby R. S. Tarvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.digbyt.com -- [email protected] mailing list
