Hi Bruce, Thanks for the reply. Some of your points I foresaw, but that doesn't invalidate them.
Bruce Dubbs wrote: > 1. Each page of the BLFS has a link to a wiki page. Users are free > to add to them, so you can help the community there if you would like. Sure. But now you have 2 pages, and one of them is in a (more or less) random format. There are no guidelines for the wiki (or didn't I search enough?). I like the "everything's in 1 place" approach. Makes it harder to forget about the other and miss something. Most likely impractical, though. > 2. For automation, take a look at Automated LFS, particularly jhalfs. > Start on the web page. Which I did when I started to feel the need. Somehow I didn't get it. Part of the motivation for writing my own package management system was that everything I looked at seemed too complex for me. I promise to take another look. > 3. You comment about dependencies is valid. It is very difficult to > determine what is needed, but it is virtually impossible for someone to > come up with a way to specify the order of dependencies when we don't > know what a user will want to install. I'm dreaming of something like a 'database' of all the dependencies and a tool that tells you a build order for a specific goal, say 'Firefox'. Ok, my little tool was like that, but I neglected to keep the 'database' up-to-date. And I used the "as soon as possible" approach only. > LFS is better in this regard > than BLFS, but the intent of LFS is to build everything there. In BLFS, > the idea is to give users a choice so they don't have a bloated set of > packages that they don't need. I understand that, but ... (see next point). > 4. Finally, remember that LFS and BLFS are not, strictly speaking, a > distro but are books that intend to teach how to build a system. From > there, you are free to customize as you wish. From your comments, it > looks to me like we were successful in your case. This is probably the central point. It is not a distro, but a lot of people use it as if it were one. If it only wants to show you how to build a system, and once you've done that you switch to one of the polished Opensuses, Debians, Ubuntus or what-have-yous, it becomes an end in itself. Is this the intended "use-case"? Build once, be happy, switch to a real distro? Everybody who builds it more than a very few times will not really read it sentence for sentence again. He or she will just cut and paste the command sections. And maybe start to think if some coverage of "how to build a system a second time/how to upgrade" would be nice. Or a repository with recipes for programs not covered by BLFS (and their dependencies). I chose the subject for a reason (which hopefully isn't "wrong understanding of the phrase" :-)). Yes, (B)LFS _is_ a distribution to me. As I mentioned, I've looked at other distros several times, intending to switch and become just a user, not having to care about the tedious builds, dependencies, configurations. I failed miserably. Maybe I'm just too old to learn something new. And see the light. I'll have to make do, I guess. Thanks again, Hans-Joachim -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
