Re: [Gnewsense-dev] Current Status (and Wiki Performance)

[dww]

Hello Sam,

If you don't mind, I have some basic questions about using Builder. 

> > Regarding learning how to use the Builder approach is their some
> > primer or other learning material from the Debian or other sites?
> 
> There's some documentation about Builder on the website [1]. 

I have been reading this page, buy didn't understand the overall
workflow.(forced to spend too much time in the Microsoft build world).

Would you please provide a basic description of the overall process in
terms of the items that are created on the local machine and the
relation to external sources of source code and packages?

Is the procedure creating a local repository of upstream source code and
build artifacts and gNewSense modified source code and build artifacts
starting with those from an upstream mirror defined in MIRROR?

Would you please explain what the different mirrors are (MIRRORLOCAL and
MIRROR)?  In the text in Step 3 for MIRROR it refers to step 5,  but
step 5 is about installing certain packages needed to run Builder
properly.

In step 4 I think debmirror is used to create a local mirror at location
in MIRRORLOCAL?  Is this the mirror to which the build from the
repository generated and updated in steps 6 and 7 is pushed in step 9.

Or is MIRRORLOCAL the mirror that should be a location on a distribution
server?

Does ./do-update actually build binaries from code in the repository or
I should ask specifically what do debmirror and do-update accomplish?

(Note)In step 7 should the pushing of changes be done in step 9 not 7?)

I would appreciate any description of what the different steps do rather
than just how?





> Running Builder needs quite a bit of disk space and takes some time. 

 Could I run Builder from an external hard drive such as a Western
Digital WD Elements which would guarantee sufficient disk space?

I noticed that the in the config file for Builder from the gNewSense
Savannah repository that BASEDIR and MIRRORLOCAL are in srv in the file
system. Can this be on an external drive instead?

> If you're
> more interested in patching packages, then Builder's gen scripts (e.g.
> gen-apt) are most interesting. They can be run by themselves as long as
> you have the config file.

So basically, patching packages involves creating gen script files with
basically sed scripts for applying changes to package source files?

What is the procedure for building and testing the modified packages,
that is, how are the gen scripts run by themselves along with the config
file? Is it just run as a bash script?
> 
> Builder also allows for Ucclia style patching, except it needs the full
> package source and not just the debian folder (although it shouldn't be
> hard to support that too). Both development approaches have their
> strong and weak points. I'm not yet sure if we're going to use one or
> the other or both.
> 
> Don't hesitate to ask questions. Builder can be daunting at first.

Thank you.
Your help would be highly appreciated.

Dennis

> 
> [1]
> http://www.gnewsense.org/Builder/HowToCreateYourOwnGNULinuxDistribution
> 
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