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charles17
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Joined: 02 Mar 2008
Posts: 3664
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 Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2017 8:28 am Post subject: |
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| R0b0t1 wrote: | [*] Portage is a moving target. Features change frequently and this is usually not reflected in documentation. A good example is /etc/package.use and family - it is possible to find widely cited advice that uses three or more recent notations.
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Could you please point us to the documentation where you found /etc/package.use? |
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steveL
Watchman
Joined: 13 Sep 2006
Posts: 5153
Location: The Peanut Gallery
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| Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2017 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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| R0b0t1 wrote: | | That said I don't know a good way to fix any of it. There might not be anything to fix. |
You're right that portage is quite a large beast; what it does is fairly complex in detail, even if fairly simple in principle. (Complexity we work with is always made of simple components.)
There's a learning-curve, sure. But I find man portage, man emerge and man make.conf fairly comprehensible.
There's just a lot you can tweak, and some of it assumes knowledge of how packages are built under the hood. (Like what CHOST actually means, how CTARGET is not what most people think it is, and how neither is CBUILD. Or how make works, which needs knowledge of shell, as does learning bash which all ebuilds are written in; etc. ##workingset are your friends. ;)
This thread reads to me like learning-curve; to aid that, I'd recommend newbs check out my tips page, including the tips for newbs on the second page.
| Quote: | | Some of the complaints brought up in this thread seem to be applicable to the difficulty of managing a modern Linux installation. Needless to say managing a Linux installation is harder without Portage. |
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| Quote: | | If you use a distribution like Debian or Ubuntu and aim to make use of the latest features you will quickly find yourself doing what Portage does, but without Portage. |
Yeah, I found it virtually impossible to compile my own kernel under RedHat and Mandrake, tried debian and didn't get on, and finally found Gentoo, where everything makes sense. ;-) |
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R0b0t1
Apprentice
Joined: 05 Jun 2008
Posts: 264
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| Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2017 4:07 pm Post subject: |
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| steveL wrote: | | R0b0t1 wrote: | | That said I don't know a good way to fix any of it. There might not be anything to fix. |
You're right that portage is quite a large beast; what it does is fairly complex in detail, even if fairly simple in principle. (Complexity we work with is always made of simple components.)
There's a learning-curve, sure. But I find man portage, man emerge and man make.conf fairly comprehensible.
There's just a lot you can tweak, and some of it assumes knowledge of how packages are built under the hood. (Like what CHOST actually means, how CTARGET is not what most people think it is, and how neither is CBUILD. Or how make works, which needs knowledge of shell, as does learning bash which all ebuilds are written in; etc. ##workingset are your friends.  |
If you want a good example of very readable documentation I suggest looking at OpenWRT's wiki. It is written for Windows users whose only interaction with Linux may be using OpenWRT.
If you need to suggest additional materials to help with Portage's learning curve then what I said seems to be accurate.
| charles17 wrote: | | R0b0t1 wrote: | [*] Portage is a moving target. Features change frequently and this is usually not reflected in documentation. A good example is /etc/package.use and family - it is possible to find widely cited advice that uses three or more recent notations.
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Could you please point us to the documentation where you found /etc/package.use? |
I edited the comment; hopefully it was clear I meant /etc/portage/package.use. |
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steveL
Watchman
Joined: 13 Sep 2006
Posts: 5153
Location: The Peanut Gallery
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| Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2017 3:05 pm Post subject: |
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| R0b0t1 wrote: | | If you need to suggest additional materials to help with Portage's learning curve then what I said seems to be accurate. |
I wasn't disagreeing with you. Just pointing out that much of the learning curve is about what portage is managing on your behalf: the UNIX toolchain (shell, make, compilers, linkers, loaders, assemblers) and package dependencies, including link dependencies, build-dependencies and cross-compilation. Quite before we consider the various implementation-languages.
It is a big subject.
So I point anyone interested in learning about it, in the direction of information.
##workingset is my overall recommendation on the subject.
It is hard to understand a wrapper, when you have no experience with what it is wrapping.
Most of the time, what it is wrapping is worth knowing about in its own right (or no-one would want to make it "more convenient" with a wrapper), and quite often the wrapping simply obfuscates what lies beneath (since the user doesn't want to worry about it, this doesn't usually matter.)
UNIX software traditionally just exposes everything (relevant), and leaves it to the admin to worry about configuration; sane defaults and validation are essential.
Portage doesn't obfuscate it; so you have all the knobs for underlying software exposed, not just for build but for tree-maintenance (eg syncing exposes rsync, wget, ssh.)
Hence the documentation can seem overwhelming, especially if you have no experience of software configuration and automated builds.
That's okay: it's all there to learn about, or not, as the user chooses. |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54237
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2017 3:24 pm Post subject: |
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| steveL wrote: | | That's okay: it's all there to learn about, or not, as the user chooses. |
Rather like How birds learned to make their nests.
That's not the one I remember but it was a long time ago.
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NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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steveL
Watchman
Joined: 13 Sep 2006
Posts: 5153
Location: The Peanut Gallery
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| Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2017 4:34 pm Post subject: |
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| steveL wrote: | | That's okay: it's all there to learn about, or not, as the user chooses. |
That is a great parable, Neddy; thanks. :-) |
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arnvidr
l33t
Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 629
Location: Oslo, Norway
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| Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2017 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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Hi all, sorry for never getting back to this thread, in case anyone wondered if I was successful. Never managed to remember trying when I first found the thread, and then just skipped directly to a 4.11 kernel. Thanks to the patches posted by xaviermiller this seems to have been a success. Ready patch for 4.12 in case I ever move to that is also much appreciated (I use the rt patchset, which is only up to 4.11).
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