Installer for GNU - probably off a Live CD? I was thinking a live system on a cd that we could maybe just cp over to a hard drive? The components for a proper Live CD probably still need some work.
Correct, we need to fix mkisofs so that it supports passive translators. Packager Manager - we need to figure out what a GNU package will look like.. I believe Alfred probably has some sort of idea about that as it ties into the GSC I believe. Maybe we could use apt to install the packages? What the package manager will look like is already settled, it is a file-system translator. To simplify installation something like apt-get will be needed. But that is for later, first we need to make stowfs work properly. GNU System Creator - still needs to be finished? I actually have no clue.. Last time I tried it out, it seemed to work quite well for building the few packages I tried. Maybe Alfred can give us an update? It needs a bit of polishing in some parts, specially when it comes to patching various programs to work on GNU. Otherwise, it should be quite done unless someone knows of any features that might be missing.... I guess at this point we need to have some more discussion on what things need to be done and how we want them to be done. There is a TODO file in the GSC arch tree. That should contain some hints. I have attached that file at the end of this message. Alfred, could you please give us an update on GNU and what you think needs to be done and maybe some notes on how you would like to see it done? The TODO file that is in GSC is attached, this is what I think should be done. If someone feels something is missing, please tell. ===File ~/slask/gsc/TODO==================================== * TODO list -*- Outline -*- Time-stamp: <2005-02-21 05:40:46 ams> * What needs to be done for GNU (Liberation) The items are listed based on priority, I would like to see a system that runs as a first step; which means being able to create the system. Then I think fixing the startup script is a bit more important then writing a packagefs/stowfs translator since there is already code that can be used. After that is done, it would be wise to concentrate on the packagefs/stowfs translator, so that one can replace Stow which will be used as a bandage while we don't have packagefs/stowfs. The installer is of course crucial if GNU should get wide adoption by everyone, and is a must for a official release. Of course, these are only my priorities, so feel free to ignore them. If any details are missing, then please look at the mailing list archives and send a patch that adds any such missing details to this document. It should document all decisions that have been made. ** the GNU system creator This is what I am working on currently, it is meant to build the packages that users can download from for example ftp.gnu.org to install. It isn't meant to be a package manager, but more of a automated builder that would run on a dedicated machine, and compile things. *** packages to fix This is a list of packages that aren't "clean". **** gzip Creates empty libdir. Doesn't work well with --prefix=, some scripts get /usr/local as the file name for gzip. **** gdbm Whats this? checking for main in -ldbm... no checking for main in -lndbm... no **** automake checking for tex... no /bin/autoconf: /bin/autom4te: /usr/bin/perl: bad interpreter: No such file or directory /bin/autoconf: line 271: /bin/autom4te: (os/kern) successful **** bash checking for default mail directory... unknown Doesn't install info pages. **** binutils Remove /i686-pc-gnu0.3. **** e2fsprogs Installs gziped info page. **** emacs Installs info pages without a .info extention. **** bison checking for valgrind... no **** help2man checking for module Locale::gettext... no configure: error: perl module Locale::gettext required *** meta-packages The following is a list of meta-packages that will or might be provided. **** sub-hurd This meta package has been tested a bit, needs more testing though. The following packages will be in this meta-package: bash, coreutils, glibc, gnumach (gnumach-1-branch for now), guile, hurd, dmd. dmd doesn't work yet, see next to-do item. **** bootstrap The following packages will be part of this meta-package: binutils, bison, diffutils, e2fsprogs, emacs, findutils, flex, gawk, gcc, gdb, gdbm, grep, gzip, less, m4, make, ncurses, perl, readline, sed, sharutils, stow, tar, texinfo, grub, mig, parted. **** GNU I'm a bit sketchy if we should have a "GNU" meta-package, since I do not know what it should include. Should it include for example everything that is part of the GNU project? If not, what should it exclude (anything that is dependent on X comes to mind, then we could have a meta-package called GNOME that contains the X11 stuff)? I would like for the later, but it would require that we have separate packages for things that depend on X libraries, and this isn't very good. So I think that the solution will simple be: everything that is part of the GNU project. ** dmd This would be the program that starts all processes on boot, it is very nicely written and has a very interesting design. You can read more about it at http://www.update.uu.se/~ams/dmd/dmd--0.7/README. The latest release is available there too (~ams/dmd/). ** console at startup The (saying new would be hilarious) console should start on boot up, instead of the Mach console. This is more useful for users, and provides both UTF-8 support and virtual consoles. A couple issues need to be solved in the console, the only one that comes to my mind right now is that panics, and messages from translators aren't shown in the console, they are shown in the Mach console. ** packagefs/stowfs This would be the package manager for GNU, it would sit on /package and then "merge things into /, i.e. /packages/*/bin becomes /bin. Installation is done by: tar -xzvf emacs-21.1.tgz ln -s /packages/emacs-21.1 emacs-21.1 And deinstallation would be to simply remove /packages/emacs-21.1. *** write a canonical document about packagefs/stowfs This document should include things that packagefs/stowfs should be capable of, and how things should behave. ** (fancy!) installer For wide adaptation of the GNU system it is important to have a nice installer that makes it not only easy to use GNU, but also to install it. Wolfgang Jearlich tossed around a few ideas on how this installer should look like. *** CD booting CD booting almost works, console-run is being unfriendly. Fix GNU Mach to not require a root device, grab it from Multiboot. *** more discussion... There should be a bit more discussion about how the installer should be designed, and as always some kind of document outlining what it should do. ** info-dir This is the latest member in the family of things-that-need-to-be-done, simply put it is a translator that keeps /info/share/dir (a index used by GNU Info for looking up manuals) updated automaticly, this means that one doesn't need to run install-info or any other such hack when installing manuals. *** write a canonical document about info-dir Small summary of what it should do, my mail to gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org is I believe sufficient. But it should at least be stored somewhere else then the mailing list archives. * What needs to be done for GNU (???) To far into the future for us to care about right now. Lets get a good release of GNU first before we even think about this in any depth. ** uniting GNU It would be nice to some how bring all GNU projects together, and make them implement all kinds of nice things that the Hurd allows. ** autopackage This would be similar to what some parts of GSC do, all GNU projects should support a `package' target that produces a GNU package. That way we can remove the package creation from the GSC and let all auto* projects pick the fruits of an easy way to create packages. ============================================================ _______________________________________________ gnu-system-discuss mailing list gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-system-discuss
