How to contribute with Moebius apt repo?
Raspberry PI minimal linux distribution
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Good afternoon:
I'm very interested in contributing with this distro, but the problem now is the lack of packages. Can i make a fork of the repo and add some packages? So i can make changes for testing and merging (pull requests) with the official repo when it's going to be necessary.
I need to know what documentation are you using, for avoiding incompatibilities between official and testing packages.
Thanks in advance.
Greetings.
Hi,
with this new major release I have totally rebuilt it from scratch. Previous one was Debian based but this one it's not (derived from nothing). Basic idea was to have the smallest possible footprint and later on add basic services to it, it will never be complete like Raspbian or suitable for a desktop usage. I have created it for few basic tasks: fileserver, robotics, python+IO+hw peripherals (for hw hacking), and everything in between.
Kernel/image-
I have a quite small image, a running system with SSH (dropbear) uses approx 20Mb of RAM and ~70-80Mb of Disk. Kernel it's not so optimized (yet) but it's good, I have also tried to include as many modules as possible to keep a good hw compatibility (Hynix chips and different raspi hw revisions).
libc-
My first rebuild attempt was with uglibc, image was even better and really optimized (10-12Mb of RAM !) but I have had problems with everything. "easy" packages like "vim", "nano", "gcc" were fine but every time I have tried to use something "complex" like for example : mysql/mariadb, php or python was a total pain. I'm now using eglibc (embedded glibc), performs really well on embedded platforms because was born for them. glibc is the best option but unfortunately produces fat code for an ARM.
package repository-
I don't want to create my own package manager (even if this idea is cool) because I have no time for it. Personally I don't like .rpm and .ipk utils are too minimal. apt-utils are fine for dealing complex deps (the real force of Debian based distros) and it's not so complex to generate a .deb package so I have included apt-utils (dpkg, apt-get, apt-cache and few more) in the image to deal with dependencies and my own deb files. Every .deb file is now optimized for ARMHF support (take a look at the blog area). I have a gentoo machine with a cross compile gcc toolchain for this, an initial pain to create a setup but now I can compile without troubles.
fork ? contribute ?
Yes you can, I'm glad this small distro is fine for you. my target is not wayland or a complete xwindow system, I'm more focused on something different. I have received a mail (and a comment somewhere) from a guy who wants to port MAME to it because he/she don't care about the system itself but wants to have a mame machine for his/her own stuff. I'll help him as soon as possible but my time is limited, I'm more focused on porting devel tools (gcc, g++, python, php, make, binutils, ...) so guys like you can add their more stuff to it.
Let's keep in touch, if you don't have my email you can write me at andreabenini on the usual google mail service account. My english is poor but I'm sure we'll find a way to communicate
Cheers
Ben
Hi!
Awesome objetive!(for hw hacking).... can you add python-serial or screen to moebius repository???
Also postgresql, python-psycopg2, nginx, gnuincorn will be berry useful!
Nice suggestions, to sum them up and add other users suggestions collected from various sources I have decided to create a topic with that into "Ideas and suggestions". Nginx is already there even if current package is a little bit rough, I'm working on it right now.
Python means also py-serial and py-io because I like robots and I wish to write something with them quickly. PostgreSQL is a nice idea as well as the py-httpd.
I have had some hype with this new v2.0 but I'm now seriously trying to reply to everyone in order to place suitable packages for some sort of pseudo-server-hacking-embedded-minimal-text-only version of this stuff :) thanks and keep visiting :)