[ale] rpm.pbone.net

Lightner, Jeff jlightner at water.com
Thu Feb 18 08:53:23 EST 2010 

So, essentially someone made a choice not to fix lesstif for Gentoo.  My
point is that people are making choices as to what to include or
exclude. 

I know lesstif works because I use it on Fedora so it isn't a bug in
lesstif itself but rather its implementation on Gentoo (or perhaps a
conflict with motif if that is provided).

Fedora provides lesstif because their licensing model doesn't allow for
motif (though of course I could have gotten motif myself somewhere
outside the Fedora repositories).  On the flip side RHEL comes with
motif and I'd have to go get lesstif somewhere else if I wanted it..
For my purposes I needed the library so it didn't really matter to me
which I used as they both provide it.   I did have to beat some folks
into submission to use lesstif because their documentation said to use
motif and they couldn't understand the requirement was really just for
the library not the specific package.  They were very surprised when
their install worked without complaining about it.

For most installs I've not needed to add anything not provided by the
default repositories for Fedora or RHEL and haven't really been too put
out by the few times I have.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jeff
Hubbs
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 9:55 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: Re: [ale] rpm.pbone.net

On 2/17/10 1:21 PM, Lightner, Jeff wrote:
> And if there were agreement on the best way to do all this there
> wouldn't be so many different distros.  FOSS includes "free" including
> "free" choices on how to best do things.
>    
No disagreement there.  BTW, one thing that one will see with Portage is

its adaptability to an "imperfect" (as per RMS) software world; emerging

certain packages does nothing but tell you how to hand-download/install 
it because the license allows use but not repackaging.  I have also for 
the first time recently seen one package block another specifically by 
virtue of its license!

> So in your setup does Gentoo for example include both lesstif and
motif
> as options from a single location or does it pick one or the other and
> make you create your "overlay" for the other?   How is having to
create
> "overlays" better than having to choose additional repositories in the
> RH model?
>    
Apparently there was a bit of a dust-up a couple years ago about 
lesstif; right now, it's not in Portage at all.  See 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?format=multiple&id=193505.  
Openmotif 2.3.2 is what's current for x86 in Portage now.  If one just 
has to have lesstif right now, one is encouraged to create an overlay, 
apparently.

Suppose you were in a development shop and you had a non-OSS toolset 
that was written and maintained internally.  You could just make the 
source available and tell your folks to build it themselves or you could

build and maintain binaries for various architectures.  But suppose it's

got a lot of dependencies and suppose further those dependencies are 
version-twitchy.  You'd make an ebuild for your toolset just as you 
would if you were going to push it to the Gentoo repository, but instead

you'd make the ebuild available via overlay and configure the target 
systems to use that overlay.  On the target system side, then, your 
toolset installs just like any other package and its dependencies get 
handled according to how you set it up in the ebuild.

But for normal all-OSS systems work in Gentoo, you would typically only 
make use of an overlay if you were sort of "going rogue" or taking 
advantage of the work of someone else doing the same.  I've been working

with Gentoo for about seven years now and I've never made or used one.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Jeff
> Hubbs
> Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 12:32 PM
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: Re: [ale] rpm.pbone.net
>
> On 2/17/10 9:51 AM, Lightner, Jeff wrote:
>    
>> Not having used Gentoo I can't really comment on its world except to
>>      
> say
>    
>> that I doubt it has any all encompassing repository of every possible
>> OSS any more than RedHat style distributions do.
>>
>>      
> That's the basic idea, actually - it's not "every possible", of
course,
> but a complete repository of packages is 106GiB (pats his
> updated-twice-a-day local repository).  We don't traffic in stacks of
> CDs or DVDs and personally I don't bother with Bittorrent.  A
tens-of-MB
>
> install cd to create an initial instance for a given architecture that
> can then be flown into various and snbdry hardware in that arch is
> plenty.  Apps for which there is no package in Portage can either be
> built from source (a fully functional build system is implicit in the
> Gentoo design) or you can fairly readily make a package yourself (in
> which case you can get it added to the repository or make an overlay
for
>
> your own use).
>
> There is a mechanism for augmenting the repository with "overlays" -
> sometimes people create overlays for code that's developed locally,
for
> instance - and there's something called "virtual packages" where, for
> instance, you have a "virtual-jdk" package that aliases to whichever
JDK
>
> you've got dialed up.  There's no GUI installer to absorb distro
> development team effort and whose intentions can be misunderstood
> (wasn't there an AIEE! INSTALLER NUKED MY DISK! message here not long
> ago?).
>
> Overall, a great way to produce lean, efficient Linux systems.
>
> - Jeff
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
> Proud partner. Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
>
> Please consider our environment before printing this e-mail or
attachments.
> ----------------------------------
> CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or
confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended
recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is
prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic
transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you
have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
> ----------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
>    

_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo

More information about the Ale mailing list