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kcy29581
Apprentice
Joined: 04 Nov 2004
Posts: 284
Location: England
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 Posted: Wed May 25, 2005 8:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Shadow Skill wrote: | | kcy29581 wrote: | I fail to see how officially Gentoo can ship binary packages. It doesn't take a mathematician to see how many variables are required: cflags, cxxflags, use flags, custom flags to make a package work, and others which only a dev would know.
The only way I can see binary packages actually being useful is if you employ someone (someone mentioned Genux? I don't know) to ALWAYS compile stuff especially for you, on a regular basis. But then, you've just destroyed the customisability because if you want to add a USE flag which you forgot initially... well, you have to wait for that employed person to sit and compile it for you...
So why bother with Gentoo? |
Why do I keep seeing this argument over and over and over again, all you would do is use some general USE/cflags and if the user wishes to change anything they would be told that no binary with those options exists and then they would be given the option to compile the code themselves as well as to remove any binaries that might depend on the package that cannot link properly to a source code install of that package. Assuming there is not a solution to the way binaries are linked against their dependencies. It really becomes a matter of creating extra conditional statements and adding feature metadata of some sort to a binary package. [It would probably be best if the binary format was created from the ground up with source code compatability in mind.]
I think it would also be prudent to keep the binary packages to multimedia applications as oppossed to introducing them into system space. It would also really help if we had an acurate estimate of how long a compile would take given our configuration before we actually compile something its a bit pointless to tell me after the fact how long it took, if I want to use time as a consideration for choosing whether to install a binary or not. I also think the first packages that should be offered as binaries are those that don't even have USE flags to begin with. |
Well the reason you would see this argument again and again, would be that what you have just described is not what Gentoo is all about: source based distro with customisability. I have no problem if anyone outside gentoo wishes to provide this sort of service, I'm just saying that this is not a core of gentoo, a source based distro
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Shadow Skill
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Joined: 04 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 5:57 am Post subject: |
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Everything you just said in your last post has absolutely nothing to do with the argument that it cannot be done in the first place when it can be done. [Which is what your argument essentially was in the post I quoted.] Now you are saying it shouldn't be done, yet when you read the social contract it doesn't seem as though Gentoo is meant to be fixated on compiling stuff but rather is meant to create tools so that users can be more productive.
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kcy29581
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Joined: 04 Nov 2004
Posts: 284
Location: England
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 11:45 am Post subject: |
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Like I said, I do not see myself how Gentoo can do this, even a dev is in this conversation and has said that they do not intend to provide this service.
I'm not dead-against this issue like many crazed veterans, I'm just thinking that logically, in the long run, there will be so many USE flags missing from the pre-compiled binaries. I realise that is what many people suggest: a core set of use flags, and pre-compiled binaries linked to this.
For example, I really like Arch Linux as well for my low-power systems. However I like VLC. In Arch VLC is not compiled with the browser plug-in. Fine, I request a feature update. But then I notice the same on many other programs and it gets stupid because I'm trying to make the Arch devs do all the work I should be doing. I know I can compile things myself, but then the more programs that need compiling, more maintenance time -> in the end I'll have Gentoo all over again.
If the above scenario happened with Gentoo, the poor devs would get messages like : "could you please put use flag A in package B, oh and this, and that...etc" which defeats the point of ease of use as everything would have to be recompiled every day.
Like I said, if anyone outside Gentoo wants to all this, good luck to them, I'm not going to be a git and say they shouldn't! However I do not want to see the devs spend time on binaries and less on source code.
Everyone's entitled to their own opinion 
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Shadow Skill
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Joined: 04 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 6:02 pm Post subject: |
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| kcy29581 wrote: | Like I said, I do not see myself how Gentoo can do this, even a dev is in this conversation and has said that they do not intend to provide this service.
I'm not dead-against this issue like many crazed veterans, I'm just thinking that logically, in the long run, there will be so many USE flags missing from the pre-compiled binaries. I realise that is what many people suggest: a core set of use flags, and pre-compiled binaries linked to this.
For example, I really like Arch Linux as well for my low-power systems. However I like VLC. In Arch VLC is not compiled with the browser plug-in. Fine, I request a feature update. But then I notice the same on many other programs and it gets stupid because I'm trying to make the Arch devs do all the work I should be doing. I know I can compile things myself, but then the more programs that need compiling, more maintenance time -> in the end I'll have Gentoo all over again.
If the above scenario happened with Gentoo, the poor devs would get messages like : "could you please put use flag A in package B, oh and this, and that...etc" which defeats the point of ease of use as everything would have to be recompiled every day.
Like I said, if anyone outside Gentoo wants to all this, good luck to them, I'm not going to be a git and say they shouldn't! However I do not want to see the devs spend time on binaries and less on source code.
Everyone's entitled to their own opinion |
See now that is different from what I normally see, it would only take the machine more time since you need the source code to make the binary. If people have a particular USE flag they want enabled there should be a place on the forum or bugzilla where they can request it be added if many people don't request it the devs can safely ignore it and the user will have the completely working option to handle it via source code. It isn't stupid at all to request a given flag be added to a binary, I think its the intelligent thing to do as a user since it may very well be a useful feature that the developers overlooked for the binary.
I tend to see binaries with options I do not want, namely Gnome packages and gstreamer dependencies, and arts crap. I would love to be able to compile things like this on my Laptop under FC and strip out these useless things but they don't provide a working mechanism for doing so without totally nuking your setup eventually when the next update rolls around. I'm going to give FC one more shot with FC4 if it starts pissing me off again I think I'll try arch next, what is that distro like anyway?
The whole binary thing doesn't have to please everyone but it shouldn't not be an option at all if it can be made to work correctly with the systems.
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Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.
"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it." |
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{BaC}Archer
n00b
Joined: 03 May 2005
Posts: 10
Location: Mexia, TX
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2005 1:23 am Post subject: |
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| spb wrote: | | {BaC}Archer wrote: | | It seems to me that if every Gentoo user had a GUID, and several people did the compiling, each GUID & IP/routing combination could be associated with .a certain level of (earned) trust by a central source, based on accuracy/performance. Then, the most common (assuming *most* are correct) compilations for given settings, from known trusted sources could be used. ....In effect meaning you'd have to trust most, or at least *some* of the users. ...That and the central repository(ies)... |
How do you judge accuracy? How do you know what's a good compilation and what isn't, without doing the whole thing yourself to check it? And even if you can work that out, what's to stop someone from distributing good packages for a while to build up a trust rating, then starting to trojan their builds later on ? |
Establishing by majority, and maintaining by requiring at least three or four trusted sources. |
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spb
Retired Dev
Joined: 02 Jan 2004
Posts: 2135
Location: Cambridge, UK
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2005 1:30 pm Post subject: |
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| {BaC}Archer wrote: | | Establishing by majority, and maintaining by requiring at least three or four trusted sources. |
Explain to me how this is going to work. |
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jamiethehutt
n00b
Joined: 04 Oct 2004
Posts: 66
Location: Scotland!
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| Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 12:08 am Post subject: |
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| Gherald wrote: | | Each participant would run a p2p daemon equipped to serve binaries from /usr/portage/packages or generated on the fly using quickpkg. The binary packages would be hashed (SHA1, md5sum, or whatever) and signed with gpg keys exchanged on these forums. Everyone would be free to choose they want to trust (For instance, one could elect to trust all forum veterans, moderators, administrators, developers, etc except a select few you expressly want to distrust). |
SETI@Home send the same data off to several different nodes and then check if they get the same result back from all the nodes to see if any of the nodes have tampered with the data/miscalculated, it's a simple yet effective idea.
I'd suggest something like that, sure it means that you probably have to do two or more times the work but whats the cost of security?
Heh, I'm suddenly imagining a Portage@Home screen saver...
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Genone
Retired Dev
Joined: 14 Mar 2003
Posts: 9527
Location: beyond the rim
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| Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 12:13 am Post subject: |
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| Doesn't work, you won't get identical results. |
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Chaosite
Guru
Joined: 13 Dec 2003
Posts: 540
Location: Right over here.
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| Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 8:56 pm Post subject: |
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P2P apps:
Different compilers. Different glibc. Different headers. Hardened systems.
...
*poof* |
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{BaC}Archer
n00b
Joined: 03 May 2005
Posts: 10
Location: Mexia, TX
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 2:54 pm Post subject: |
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| spb wrote: | | {BaC}Archer wrote: | | Establishing by majority, and maintaining by requiring at least three or four trusted sources. |
Explain to me how this is going to work. |
It would require every compliation to be tracked by IP, USE variable and two GUIDs. ...One for the "compiling computer", and one for the workset. There would also need to be a password for each user run over encryption.
IP: As a back-up form of checking. ...It may be pointless, as if anyone "sniffed" them off the network, they might be able to grab the IP too...
Operator ID: At least give an indication of who compiled. ..Requiring this to correspond with the IP is just an added layer of security.
Workset ID: To help ensure the workset was actually downloaded and compiled, etc.
Encrypted password/exchange would be necessary to prevent the IDs from being sniffed.
Once completed, responses could be grouped by pertinent USE variables, checksum'd and compared. If there is a strong majority for the results, the results could be used, and the Operator IDs given more "confidence" for the next run. Ideally, two passes would be required. First, to verify that there is a majority present from sources that have earned "confidence", and that the overall majority also agrees. ...Majority could then be established by both a "one compile one vote" basis, and a "the more we trust you" basis.
It wouldn't be perfectly secure, but it might be sufficient. |
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spb
Retired Dev
Joined: 02 Jan 2004
Posts: 2135
Location: Cambridge, UK
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 4:58 pm Post subject: |
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| {BaC}Archer wrote: | | It wouldn't be perfectly secure, but it might be sufficient. |
It won't. For a start, you haven't handled the case where I have a different version of a library to another build host, and the ABIs are incompatible. Or a different toolchain. |
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bojan_bozovic
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Joined: 14 Apr 2006
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 9:25 am Post subject: Gentoo package repository anytime soon? |
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| If you want LFS then Gentoo might be good, but what if you don't, you just wish precompiled packages? On any system you can build from source. I think it might be good idea to give your users second, more traditional option of installing precompiled packages, the way you do it is inflexible, it is good for LFS system, but otherwise not, if something needs to be upgraded or installed quickly. I don't have anything else to say, hoping this will be heard by right people. |
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brims
Guru
Joined: 19 Apr 2004
Posts: 492
Location: Arizona
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 9:40 am Post subject: |
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Ya, that's called a binary distro, eg. Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, etc. Gentoo has GRP packages, but what's the point of a meta distro if you are going to use precompiled binaries?
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bojan_bozovic
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Joined: 14 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 9:46 am Post subject: |
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| Point is that you can do it both ways. Makes that Ubuntu unneccessary, right? |
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sternklang
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Joined: 10 Sep 2005
Posts: 1641
Location: Somewhere in time and space
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 1:08 pm Post subject: |
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Ubuntu is an excellent distro. There's nothing wrong with different distros taking different approaches to how a linux distro should be put together. I would have no problem recommending Ubuntu to someone who did not want to deal with compiling packages.
Gentoo, on the other hand, offers infinite flexibility and configurability, not to mention bleeding-edge versions of a large number of packages. It's also a non-profit foundation, not a large corporation which can hire more devs to handle a greater workload. And maintaining a binary repository and doing release engineering on a binary tree for each arch as well as the current source trees would either require more people or less time spent keeping the source trees as full of packages and up-to-date versions. Not to mention freezing Gentoo into specific release versions like other distros instead of the constant package update that means everyone who updates regularly is always at the latest "version" of Gentoo.
So no offence but use whichever distro works for you. Don't expect Gentoo to be all things to all people. |
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tsunam
Retired Dev
Joined: 23 Feb 2004
Posts: 343
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 3:50 pm Post subject: |
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hate to say it but if you want a full binary type install listing of packages your best bet is with something like arch linux. It'd have that binary tree for you with a similar feel to how portage is.
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Naib
Watchman
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6051
Location: Removed by Neddy
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 4:10 pm Post subject: |
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Those who don't understand Gentoo are doomed to reinvent it, poorly
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sonicbhoc
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Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Posts: 1805
Location: In front of the computer screen
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Korora Linux is not what I call a poor reinvention of Gentoo. It is pretty much Gentoo that installs faster using binaries (almost exactly like GRP but unstable packages), but you can always emerge -e world and you have a custom built Gentoo system. |
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Monkeh
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Joined: 06 Aug 2005
Posts: 1656
Location: England
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 4:45 pm Post subject: |
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There are a good number here: http://vanquirius.monkeh.net
However, I don't think they've been updated for a bit. I know I haven't updated any of the stuff I've done.. |
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loki99
Advocate
Joined: 10 Oct 2003
Posts: 2056
Location: Vienna, €urope
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 7:30 pm Post subject: |
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| sonicbhoc wrote: | | Korora Linux is not what I call a poor reinvention of Gentoo. It is pretty much Gentoo that installs faster using binaries (almost exactly like GRP but unstable packages), but you can always emerge -e world and you have a custom built Gentoo system. |
Kororaa is not a binary distro but just another way to install Gentoo. They don't have a binary repository. |
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Maedhros
Bodhisattva
Joined: 14 Apr 2004
Posts: 5511
Location: Durham, UK
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 9:50 pm Post subject: |
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Merged from here to this thread.
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