Re: [Linuxcoe-devel] Update on packaging

[Bryan G. <Bry...@HP...>]

Bruno,

On Tue, Oct 09, 2007 at 08:10:53AM +0000, Cornec, Bruno (Linux Consultant) wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> This is called ProjectBuilder (aka pb). Cf:
> http://trac.project-builder.org
> 
> The tool is written in perl, and provides the following functions:
> 
>         cms2build: Create tar files for the project under your CMS
>                    CMS supported are SVN and CVS
> 
>         build2pkg: Create packages for your running distribution
> 
>         cms2pkg:   cms2build + build2pkg
> 
>         build2ssh: Send the tar files to a SSH host
> 
>         pkg2ssh:   Send the packages built to a SSH host
> 
>         build2vm:  Create packages in VMs, launching them if needed
>                    and send those packages to a SSH host once built
>                    VM type supported are QEMU
> 
>         cms2vm:    cms2build + build2vm
> 
>         launchvm:  Launch one virtual machine
> 
>         script2vm: Launch one virtual machine if needed
>                    and executes a script on it
> 
> 
> They are mostly all working for both mondo (SVN) and LinuxCOE (CVS).
> I've produced last week my first packages for Mandriva (my native
> distro) and I'm in the process of upgrading all my VMs (QEMU based) in
> order to be able to produce my next MondoRescue version (2.2.5) using
> that system (60% done). Once it's done, I'll also be able to generate
> packages for LinuxCOE for the same set of distro. All RPMs based distro
> are now working (fedora, rhel, mandriva, sles, suse), and I'm converting the
> .deb based VMs. Gentoo, Slackware will follow.

This is all great work Bruno  !!

> Now specifically for LinuxCOE, I've worked on systemdesigner and
> systemdesigner-docs packages up to now. But in order to have a useful
> system, I'd need a package supporting one distribution.
> But (there is always a but ;-), packaging a set of binary files is
> really not appealing to me.

We totally agree and have been meaning to move those out of the
package space for awhile now.

> Have someone already worked on a script that would allow to generate
> from a distro the files needed by LinuxCOE, without embedding them in a
> package ? (after all it's generated so shouldn't be part of neither the
> package, nor the CVS IMHO) ?

Several of us have talked about a script, and Louis even started one,
IIRC:

	SystemDesigner/bin/make-images

although I don't think it's functional yet.  There is already
a README under images that talks about how to create them.

> At the point I'm now, I'd need to work on that soon, so any already
> existing tool would help, if not I'll begin to look at that for Mandriva
> (which will also help adding support for that distro ;-) keeping in mind
> the genericity needed for other distro as well.

At thist point, I can certainly remove the "images" from the
package/install perspective (and leave them only in the "make dist"
tarball view), so that you can proceed.  Then step two, I will move
them out of CVS, and use up some more of our graciously provided
"instalinux" disk quota to directly host them for download.  Step
3 can then provide a script to generate them.  This stepwise approach
will allow you to continue working on this very visible portion of
the project, yes allow us to smoothly transition out of "vending"
distro images :)

> WDYT ?

Above steps seem reasonable?

> Another problem I have is with the versioning of the LinuxCOE project.
> Where are those version number handled ? Is there a subverion ? When a
> new package is released, will it be 4.1 ? 4.0.1 ? What granularity do
> you want ?

The autoconf/automake currently handles the versioning, but my plan all
along has been to use CVS tags (since we don't use subversion) to denote
versioning.  Seems like now might be the right time to begin that
implementation as well,

bryang