[indiana-discuss] "Where do I download OpenSolaris" Ian Murdock

[Matt Ingenthron]

Martin Man wrote:
> Shawn Walker wrote:
>   
>> On 29/08/2007, Rene Cunningham <rene at terdmonk.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> This _could be_ something like what debian provides with `apt-get
>>> source` where the end user can easily obtain access to pristine upstream source plus
>>> debian changes and changelog for the package.
>>>       
>> I'm not sure that fits with the comments made so far that indicate
>> that the new packaging solution being worked on will not provide a
>> build system.
>>
>> That isn't to say that the source, etc. couldn't still be obtained via
>> a method you suggest, but it would not have the same result as an
>> srpm, or what apt-get does.
>>     
>
> so what result it will have?
>
>   

I too am curious about what the solution here is.

One of the things I'd suggested as a requirement for our Web Stack 
project on OpenSolaris is that people need to be able to easily obtain 
the sources (with any deltas) and rebuild using a set of sane build 
scripts.  It would be great if this would be easily part of Indiana, as 
it seems like it should be part of common infrastructure.

Why do we need this?  It may be unusual for someone to go rebuild Xorg 
or something more core, but there is definitely the possibility that 
people who may wish to try Indiana would need to port changes they'd 
made to PHP.  If we don't have an easy way to obtain source that 
compiles easily/correctly as a base for someone experimenting with 
OpenSolaris, they could quickly become frustrated and decide it's not 
worth it.

For those who say end-users shouldn't be changing PHP/Apache/etc.....  I 
agree with that, but experience in the field has shown me that it's 
fairly common.

Right now, the current path is one has to learn how to build sfwnv, 
which may be more complicated than users are willing to accept.  It 
makes sense that the new packaging system shouldn't be a build system 
too, but it sure would be nice if there were a way to provide 'bite 
size' pieces of source for some packages with deltas/sane build scripts 
so someone can experiment.

- Matt

p.s.: in Web Stack, we always aim to get any modifications accepted 
upstream, but also recognize that we may not be able to gate releases or 
easily get modifications accepted.  From my experience, this seems to be 
common with things like Gentoo as well, so we'll need something 
similar.  Frequently these are just modifications to be compatible (or 
optimal) with whatever the chosen toolchain is...

-- 
Matt Ingenthron - Web Infrastructure Solutions Architect
Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Global Systems Practice
http://blogs.sun.com/mingenthron/
email: matt.ingenthron at sun.com             Phone: 310-242-6439