Re: Wikipedia page question

On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 2:34 PM, Jean-Roch HUET <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> I want to advertise GoboLinux.
>
> I began to translate Wikipedia's French GoboLinux page.
> https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoboLinux
>
> Consequently, I wonder questions I have trouble answering.
> Correct me if i'm wrong.
>

Hi Jean-Roch,


> 1 - In the English Wikipedia page, it is said that a program installed
> manually is automatically detected by Compile.
>
>
I didn't find that [confusing] claim in the Wikipedia page. Can you point
me to the actual sentence?


> => How does it work?
>
> Because a program installed manually installs its files in the FHS.
> Does Compile copy these files into /Programs and create links in FHS, or
> does it create links from /Programs to FHS?
>
>
There is no magic here. If you compile something using the plain
./configure; make; make install, all files will be spread over the FHS.
Compile makes use of recipes to determine which parameters to pass to e.g.
./configure so that the package is installed onto /Programs. It also takes
care of creating the symlinks from /Programs to /System/Index.


> 2 - Recipes
>
> GoboLinux seems to be the sum of 4 things:
> - Install scripts, to install the system properly.
> - The Compile program, which allows to install Tarballs properly.
> - Gobohide kernel extension, which allows to hide the FHS (and others).
> - Recipes.
>
> Until here, I thought that Compile was a "magic" program that install
> every packet perfectly.
>
> But I understood that "Recipes" are a kind of "micro-script" helping
> Compile to install the program.
>
>
That's correct.


> => How many Recipes are available now?
>

We have recipes for ~3500 different packages.


> => Where are located the Recipes? On the server or on my computer? Which
> folder?
>

Recipes are stored on the server. You can browse them at
http://recipes.gobolinux.org/r/.

Each time you invoke Compile, the corresponding recipe is downloaded and
saved on your local disk at /Data/Compile/Recipes. If you are creating your
own recipe (through MakeRecipe or NewVersion), then the recipe will be
placed at /Data/Compile/LocalRecipes.


> 3 - Maintaining Recipes
>
> => Does each package needs a Recipe, or only those which cause troubles
> when installed?
> When the package respects "UNIX package standards", does it need Recipe
> too?
>
> If each package needs a Recipe, it appears to me to be a huge weakness of
> GoboLinux, because in the long terme, it's impossible to maintain Recipes
> for every package.
> Recipe make GoboLinux dependant from each package, that is dangerous for
> its ability to evolve.
>
>
As a rule of thumb, each package needs a recipe. The exceptions are
programming language packages that can be managed by Perl's CPAN, Haskell's
Cabal, Lua's LuaRocks, Ruby's RubyGems, and Python's PIP -- those packages
do not need recipes; one can simply state the dependency in the form
PackageManager:PackageName (e.g.: CPAN:XML::Parser), and then Compile will
let that PackageManager to deal with the details of installing that program
for you.



> => Is there a method to make Compile able to automatically create Recipes
> (which message boxes if needed, for URL for instance)?
> Or does Recipes are inevitable?
>

There is a handy script called MakeRecipe that automates the creation of
recipes for you. Given a URL, it will download the tarball, will uncompress
it, and will inspect its contents to guess how that package is supposed to
be compiled (i.e., using make, or perl, or python, or a configure script).
MakeRecipe will output a recipe that you can further modify at
/Data/Compile/LocalRecipes. If no fancy flags or changes need to be made to
the recipe, then you can invoke Compile straight away.


> 4 - Linux Kernel
>
> => If I recompile the Linux Kernel using Compile, will the GoboHide
> extension be included automatically?
>
>
Yes. The Linux recipe contains patches to enable the GoboHide extension.


5 - Many versions of a same program
>
> => GoboLinux tree allows to install many versions of a same program.
> For instance:
> - /Programs/Firefox/42.0/
> - /Programs/Firefox/41.0.2/
> - /Programs/Firefox/40.0.3/
> - /Programs/Firefox/37.0.1/
>
> => But is it possible to install the same version many times?
>
> It could be very usefull, but it would need an unique identifier, like
> - /Programs/Firefox/42.0/akdkdfjrfhdh/
> - /Programs/Firefox/42.0/fkjfdjkskdfm/
> - /Programs/Firefox/42.0/xvfmsdklklsf/
>
> Is it possible or not?
> => Will it be possible in the near future?
>

Yes, it is possible to do so. When invoking Compile, you can use the "-e
<version>" option to change the name of the versioned directory that will
be created at /Programs/ProgramName.


> Sorry for all of thiese questions, I wish to make a very clear Wikipedia
> page ^^
>

No worries. Sorry for the late response, but the questions were quite long
and this was a regular, busy week for me. :-)

Cheers,
Lucas

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