Good to see you posting, Dirk!
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The Portage take on this would be slightly different, as it will live
in its own space, with its own set of GUI accessible .apps,
Frameworks, etc. Can you elaborate on "I have to fudge around with
PATH variables and other CLI stuff"
In a more Fink inspired way, I think I would have to add at lease a
PATH=$PATH:/sw/bin resp. the settings for LD_LIBRARY_PATH (or whatever the
Mac equivalent is)
Ok, but this is of a small concern since you can just add it to your
.bashrc or .tcshrc or whichever .shellrc you use. Just like fink tells
you to source one of their files, we could do the same. Such thing
allows you to make it all accessible without needing lengthy workarounds.
and "real MacOSX integration, with App folder and GUI starter elements"
please?
With this I mean anything which enables me to e.g start X based
application via the Finder, instead of from a command line. App folder
would e.g allow me to create a "standalone" application which I can put on
another machine, without having to re-install the whole Gentoo system. I
know that this somehow circumvent the whole reason of Gentoo, namely the
automatic maintenance and update of components and their dependent
applications.
This is a really cool thought. I quick first impression is that this
should be possible, since on OSX the dylibs can be moved to another
location, or even be in a relative location as in all the .app things.
So perhaps it would indeed be possible to write a script that generates
such app. Practical problems may arise, but I like the idea.
From what I see as a user, the Gentoo packages divide into 4
categories
1) packages which integrate nicely into the system (no
dependencies, or
dependencies which are properly provided by MacOS)
The problems with this have been outlined numerous times by both
users and devs, but to quickly re-hash them: It makes system backups/
reinstalls a pain, the deps that are 'properly' provided by apple can
and will change without notice, it requires manual mapping of faux-
deps via the profiles, a software update or `diskutil
repairPermissions /` can render your portage installed files useless,
its what keeps the project a laughable novelty to most Darwin/OS X
users and developers
But... I do understand you, because I did like it too, when I tried
Gentoo for OSX, that it installs in /usr/bin. However, now I know a bit
more on the real implications of that choice and how fragile and
polluting it is, I prefer to have a nice corner on my system which
Portage doesn't have to share with anyone.
I am not so long a member of the list, so thanks for the short repetition.
Is it possible to define some kind of "safe subset" of Apple provided
packages, i.e something which is less likely to change frequently?
I guess this answer would be no. Apple changes things quite often and
doesn't care about backwards compatibility with devs so much as far as I
can tell. It's their way to innovate and react quickly to the market.
(Which is one of their core competencies.) So basically, I think the
proper way to think is: "don't trust anything you didn't create
yourself". Kito, correct me if I'm wrong here.
A USE flag for what exactly? I'm not sure I understand you.
Something like USE="install-local", which installs the package into
/usr/local instead of /usr.
In the default console settings this should override Apple provided
packages, without leading to collisions.
An interesting thought, but why would a user have to do this him or
herself? I'd immediately say that portage would have to do this
automatically when necessary. Why bother a (Mac) user with it? Since
this is a bit complicated, and asks more from Portage (flexible install
location) the current approach is to diss the automatic part and just
always install into an alternative location, since that won't ever
collide with system installed stuff *and* is easier to do in Portage as
far as I have understood the discussions on it.
--
Fabian Groffen
Gentoo for Mac OS X Project -- Interim Lead
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