Hi, I have asked in few past emails to the list about catalyst, and finaly started to work with it. I did a lot of coding to overcome problems with it. I created a script that can create spec files and provide catalyst with the files to create stable or unstable trees. I was asked by Peter Stuge what I would change in catalyst. So here are my points: 1. improve the entry points for debugging. Sometimes you will need to start from a certain point, when you debug stuff, so this will provide hooks that are easy to use (commandline), and not the locking directory of the stage. 2. Solve some bugs or annoying things when working with catalyst, like /usr/src/ is not created, or the glibc locals. 3. I already created a auto generator for spec files. This is the most important bit of the auto working of catalyst. It also auto generate stage4.spec. 4. take the fear out of the loop, and be agile to changes. 5. Documentation, hehe ;-) I really had hard time using this tool. 6. Minimal stage for embedded, that will be able to sustain releases and freeze them It should be implemented something like the crossdev tool, but in more robust way. Also using the ROOT= directive. 7. Crossdev integration. 8. Implement tiny portage tree (alredy implemented), but need to add support for adding packages to it as we go along. This keeps a really minimal subset snapshot. It is really good for small system, or compiling using tmpfs. I now have 8GB of memory just for the compilations. 9. auto creation of qemu image or image that implements grub, partitions and few systems, like debugging and compiling system, and the real embedded system. 10. sql + web frontend for people that really don't know gentoo. 11. Move to Ruby ;-) (but this is just a dream) 12. Make the code functional like C code, and no just big lump of script (mostly in the Bash scripts.) 13. It does look like this tool has grown from patch to patch under fire (no time), so it needs some change in the code, to be more understandable.
What I consider to do, is create a new catalyst tree, that will serve as "next" tree for catalyst stable. Though I'm still not sure that I'll hold myself not to reorganize everything. I understand that when Gentoo will have a good catalyst for users, this will ease the work of a lot of people, needing to use Gentoo in automated environments. I also tried Metro, but found catalyst to work, and had hard time with Metro. One needs to acknowledge that catalyst holds a lot of pearls in the code, and this is its power. My thoughts, Kfir
