lists wrote:
> Jeremy Huntwork wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 07:37:12AM -0500, Randy McMurchy wrote:
>>
>>> I'll go on record as -1.
>>>
>> I'm not going to push to get this into LFS. If the vast majority of
>> those with a voice here are for PM in LFS, great. If not, great. :)
>>
>>
>>> I feel we should mention it, provide links to the various alternatives,
>>> and drive on. We are not a distribution. We are a book that shows how
>>> to compile Linux from scratch. Let's don't forget that.
>>>
>> Understandable. Of course, it could be argued that part of what makes a
>> Linux system is package management. It is after all part of the LSB.
>>
>
> The real reason that package managers are a bad thing, the bloated
> "requirements" of the meta packages in them. grab yourself a current
> debian install, and install KDE on it, minimal KDE without the kdeedu,
> games, development, pim package groups. you can't, Debian made the KDE
> meta package require 100% of all optional KDE software to install the
> base KDE.
> Debian did the same type of bloat with the Gnome meta package
> requirements, put way to much as absolutely required.
>
>
This last observation is one of the main reasons i've been using Gentoo
for 4 years - you don't even have to install all of 'kdebase' if you
don't want to, much less the other meta-packages. However, their PM,
Portage, must require an absolutely colossal amount of maintenance (&
i'm just talking about the ebuild-tree, never mind the package-manager
itself), so a similar system for {,B}LFS would almost certainly be
impractical...
During my only LFS-build thus far i used a combination of the pkgusr &
fakeroot hints, & found the use of $DESTDIR to be particularly
educational, as well as practical, so if the book were to encourage it's
use more in future, i don't think that would detract from it's original
goal of being a learning tool.
I also whole-heartedly agree with Alan's earlier comment - "The
unfortunate consequence of LFS is that it also teaches the user how
great a lean/mean Linux system can be (and most would want it to stay
that way if it *was* a distribution). I would hazard a guess that most
people who grok LFS would love to use it for their everyday distro."
Perhaps the existing book-section on package-management could be
embellished to the effect that "These are some of the most popular
options, of which we ourselves use <this one> in development of our
LiveCD project" - not so much a stipulation as an endorsement...
Subsequent to listening to an ArchLinux advocate, & looking at Greg's
DIY project, i'm thinking of using 'pacman' on my own system, but i'm in
no rush so i'll be holding off for now & following this thread with
interest to see where the consensus leads...
taipan
--
http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev
FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/
Unsubscribe: See the above information page
