[indiana-discuss] [Fwd: [desktop-discuss] SFE binary packages for OpenSolaris]

[Darren Kenny]

Hi Alan,

That's probably true, unfortunately, but I certainly think that there is a lot
to be said for encouraging further break up of the existing OpenSolaris build
system from being monolithic to being smaller parts - right now if I want to
make a change to something like /usr/bin/cat I have to have a complete build of
ON done - this really does seem excessive to me.

As Alo pointed out - Debian allows for (re)building a binary package from a
source package - but that is independent of actual build system (Ant, dmake,
autoconf, etc) that is used to do the build - but what's important is that the
source package is, in itself, smart enough to know *how* to build, and the
dependencies needed for the build to be done.

Something like this could still be done for all of OpenSolaris, and if we are
serious about making it easier for people to contribute, I think we should
consider it...

In the meantime though, I think the pkgbuild system we have is quite popular and
works well for most non-ON contributors, I just think we could do more to
breakdown the monolith that is the ON workspace into more consumable chunks.

Thanks,

Darren.

Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> Darren Kenny wrote:
>> Personally, I would have liked the IPS system to have also included a new
>> OpenSolaris build system too, like Debian packages do, which would be used for
>> *all* packages, but that's not how it's done right now, and I don't know if
>> there is any intention on going that way unless the community really push for it...
> 
> You probably wouldn't like it if it did though, since being designed by people
> with most of their experience in ON, it would be designed to match the way 
> they build - build the entire source tree, install into a proto area, and then
> build packages from that using fixed lists of files in each package - and not
> the way JDS or RPM build.
> 
> The problem with one build system remains that we don't have one build style
> all the parts of OpenSolaris agree on.
>