Re: Anything to do?

[Alfred M\. Szmidt]

   Installer for GNU - probably off a Live CD? I was thinking a live
   system on a cd that we could maybe just cp over to a hard drive?
   The components for a proper Live CD probably still need some work.

Correct, we need to fix mkisofs so that it supports passive
translators.

   Packager Manager - we need to figure out what a GNU package will
   look like.. I believe Alfred probably has some sort of idea about
   that as it ties into the GSC I believe.  Maybe we could use apt to
   install the packages?

What the package manager will look like is already settled, it is a
file-system translator.  To simplify installation something like
apt-get will be needed.  But that is for later, first we need to make
stowfs work properly.

   GNU System Creator - still needs to be finished? I actually have no
   clue.. Last time I tried it out, it seemed to work quite well for
   building the few packages I tried.  Maybe Alfred can give us an
   update?

It needs a bit of polishing in some parts, specially when it comes to
patching various programs to work on GNU.  Otherwise, it should be
quite done unless someone knows of any features that might be
missing....

   I guess at this point we need to have some more discussion on what
   things need to be done and how we want them to be done.

There is a TODO file in the GSC arch tree.  That should contain some
hints.  I have attached that file at the end of this message.

   Alfred, could you please give us an update on GNU and what you
   think needs to be done and maybe some notes on how you would like
   to see it done?

The TODO file that is in GSC is attached, this is what I think should
be done.  If someone feels something is missing, please tell.


===File ~/slask/gsc/TODO====================================
* TODO list                     -*- Outline -*-

Time-stamp: <2005-02-21 05:40:46 ams>

* What needs to be done for GNU (Liberation)

The items are listed based on priority, I would like to see a system
that runs as a first step; which means being able to create the
system.  Then I think fixing the startup script is a bit more
important then writing a packagefs/stowfs translator since there is
already code that can be used.  After that is done, it would be wise
to concentrate on the packagefs/stowfs translator, so that one can
replace Stow which will be used as a bandage while we don't have
packagefs/stowfs.

The installer is of course crucial if GNU should get wide adoption by
everyone, and is a must for a official release.  Of course, these are
only my priorities, so feel free to ignore them.

If any details are missing, then please look at the mailing list
archives and send a patch that adds any such missing details to this
document.  It should document all decisions that have been made.

** the GNU system creator

This is what I am working on currently, it is meant to build the
packages that users can download from for example ftp.gnu.org to
install.  It isn't meant to be a package manager, but more of a
automated builder that would run on a dedicated machine, and compile
things.

*** packages to fix

This is a list of packages that aren't "clean".

**** gzip
Creates empty libdir.

Doesn't work well with --prefix=, some scripts get /usr/local as the
file name for gzip.

**** gdbm

Whats this?

checking for main in -ldbm... no
checking for main in -lndbm... no

**** automake
checking for tex... no

/bin/autoconf: /bin/autom4te: /usr/bin/perl: bad interpreter: No such file or 
directory
/bin/autoconf: line 271: /bin/autom4te: (os/kern) successful

**** bash

checking for default mail directory... unknown

Doesn't install info pages.

**** binutils

Remove /i686-pc-gnu0.3.

**** e2fsprogs

Installs gziped info page.

**** emacs

Installs info pages without a .info extention.

**** bison

checking for valgrind... no

**** help2man

checking for module Locale::gettext... no
configure: error: perl module Locale::gettext required

*** meta-packages

The following is a list of meta-packages that will or might be
provided.

**** sub-hurd

This meta package has been tested a bit, needs more testing though.

The following packages will be in this meta-package: bash, coreutils,
glibc, gnumach (gnumach-1-branch for now), guile, hurd, dmd.

dmd doesn't work yet, see next to-do item.

**** bootstrap

The following packages will be part of this meta-package: binutils,
bison, diffutils, e2fsprogs, emacs, findutils, flex, gawk, gcc, gdb,
gdbm, grep, gzip, less, m4, make, ncurses, perl, readline, sed,
sharutils, stow, tar, texinfo, grub, mig, parted.

**** GNU

I'm a bit sketchy if we should have a "GNU" meta-package, since I do
not know what it should include.  Should it include for example
everything that is part of the GNU project?  If not, what should it
exclude (anything that is dependent on X comes to mind, then we could
have a meta-package called GNOME that contains the X11 stuff)?

I would like for the later, but it would require that we have separate
packages for things that depend on X libraries, and this isn't very
good.  So I think that the solution will simple be: everything that is
part of the GNU project.

** dmd

This would be the program that starts all processes on boot, it is
very nicely written and has a very interesting design.  You can read
more about it at http://www.update.uu.se/~ams/dmd/dmd--0.7/README.

The latest release is available there too (~ams/dmd/).

** console at startup

The (saying new would be hilarious) console should start on boot up,
instead of the Mach console.  This is more useful for users, and
provides both UTF-8 support and virtual consoles.

A couple issues need to be solved in the console, the only one that
comes to my mind right now is that panics, and messages from
translators aren't shown in the console, they are shown in the Mach
console.

** packagefs/stowfs

This would be the package manager for GNU, it would sit on /package
and then "merge things into /, i.e. /packages/*/bin becomes /bin.
Installation is done by:

tar -xzvf emacs-21.1.tgz
ln -s /packages/emacs-21.1 emacs-21.1

And deinstallation would be to simply remove /packages/emacs-21.1.

*** write a canonical document about packagefs/stowfs

This document should include things that packagefs/stowfs should be
capable of, and how things should behave.

** (fancy!) installer

For wide adaptation of the GNU system it is important to have a nice
installer that makes it not only easy to use GNU, but also to install
it.  Wolfgang Jearlich tossed around a few ideas on how this installer
should look like.

*** CD booting

CD booting almost works, console-run is being unfriendly.  Fix GNU
Mach to not require a root device, grab it from Multiboot.

*** more discussion...

There should be a bit more discussion about how the installer should
be designed, and as always some kind of document outlining what it
should do.

** info-dir

This is the latest member in the family of
things-that-need-to-be-done, simply put it is a translator that keeps
/info/share/dir (a index used by GNU Info for looking up manuals)
updated automaticly, this means that one doesn't need to run
install-info or any other such hack when installing manuals.

*** write a canonical document about info-dir

Small summary of what it should do, my mail to
address@hidden is I believe sufficient.  But it should at
least be stored somewhere else then the mailing list archives.

* What needs to be done for GNU (???)

To far into the future for us to care about right now.  Lets get a
good release of GNU first before we even think about this in any
depth.

** uniting GNU

It would be nice to some how bring all GNU projects together, and make
them implement all kinds of nice things that the Hurd allows.

** autopackage

This would be similar to what some parts of GSC do, all GNU projects
should support a `package' target that produces a GNU package.  That
way we can remove the package creation from the GSC and let all auto*
projects pick the fruits of an easy way to create packages.
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