[Peeweelinux-devel] Re: DOC Docs

[Adi Linden]

On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, Mark Meade wrote:

> Adi Linden wrote:
> 
> > I am thinking about a directory structure similar to what's below. This
> > might seem awkward at first, but it will allow for chroot to /peeweelinux
> > and building of packages within the chrooted environment. Now it won't
> > mater any longer what underling Linux distribution is used for
> > PeeWeeLinux.
> 
> Being able to rebuild Peewee from scratch would be great.  I assume that this would allow
> the user to easily rebuild with any version of gcc, glibc, etc.  Would this scheme greatly
> increase the size of the Peewee distribution -- and would the "binary" only version still
> be available?

Yes, the binary distribution would still be available. I think my 
packaging of choice would be an iso image or tar.gz archive containing the 
scripts and binary rpms. However, it should also be possible to download 
the build scripts only, from cvs or as an archive. Then it would be 
possible to download the individual binary (or source) rpms only as 
needed. Changing any of the libs other packages rely on (like glibc) would 
certainly require all rpms to be rebuild from the source rpms.

To create the build environment, additional binary rpms will be required 
to install on the host system for building PeeWeeLinux packages. I am not 
sure yet how to do this. I am envisioning that a special rpm is build with 
every source rpm that has a distinguishable name, such as <package>-devel. 
The sole purpose of this rpm would be to create the environment to build 
rpms. 

For someone wanting to create the current development environment to build 
a rpm to be contributerd, all the rpms would have to be installed under 
the /peeweelinux directory. To actually create a rpm from a srpm, one 
would have to chroot to the /peeweelinux directory.

If a major portion of PeeWeeLinux is changed, such as glibc, all binary 
rpms will have to be rebuild. Because of dependencies, this would have to 
be done in a well defined order.  

> > When RPMS are build, a <packagename>-devel rpm would be build for the sole
> > purpose of installing in the chrooted environment. This will make it easy
> > to link against just the libs that are part of PeeWeeLinux.
> 
> What would be the process of adding new packages to the pwlconfig menus?  Is this
> something that could be automated, or would any new packages added end up as "custom"
> files?

pwlconfig actually processes all the packages in the RPMS directory. It 
uses the tags in the rpm file to categorize the content. If a custom rpm 
is contributed it is as simple as dropping the rpm into the RPMS directory 
and then using pwlconfig to convert rpms to tar files.

> Also, the ability for people to easily contribute Peewee packages would be nice.  I
> envision the Peewee website having an area for user contributed packages, and other users
> could simply download a given package (binary only, or complete source), and add it to
> their already installed base.  Again, this is similar to LRP packages; for an example, see
> http://lrp.steinkuehler.net/Packages.htm.

Yes, this is easily possible. In fact, this can be done now. I think the 
big stumbling block now is that there is no documentation on how to create 
a rpm to contribute to PeeWeeLinux. Also, without having a dedicated build 
environment, it is difficult to ensure proper dependencies. 

I am also looking to keep the PeeWeeLinux scripts seperated from the 
packages. This should make it possible to start using CVS to maintain the 
pwlconfig files and other scripts and sources.

Regards,
Adi