GSoC: Separation of Ports Build Process from Local Installation

[Peter Pentchev]

On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 08:28:41PM -0700, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> [ Charset UTF-8 unsupported, converting... ]
> > Hello All,
> > 
> > For Google Summer of Code 2019 I am working on FreeBSD's ports tree 
> > makefiles towards eliminating the dependency of the ports building 
> > process on the local system's installed packages.? Currently this level 
> > of separation can only be accomplished in practice through chroot or 
> > Jail.? The project will eliminate the need for cooperation of the root 
> > user since /usr/local will not need to be touched.
> > 
> > The major technical obstacle to be overcome is that ports expect to find 
> > files of their dependencies installed in /usr/local.? To support this 
> > without touching that location on the installed system, file accesses 
> > will be redirected to a location controlled by the ports build process 
> > through use of a library to intercept file accesses.
> 
> Assumption of /usr/local was considered wrong long long ago and it
> should always be ${PREFIX}.  Any place that actually assumes this
> value to be /usr/local should be fixed.
> 
> Had this policy been properly maintained it would simply be a mater
> of changing ${PREFIX} to a new and empty place before starting
> a ports build and things should of just worked.
> 
> Restoration to this ancient and functional behavior is desirable
> at least on my part.

Hmm, I could be wrong, but isn't ${LOCALBASE} supposed to be where
ports find stuff *during the build*, and ${PREFIX} where they
install the built files?  Of course, I haven't actually touched
a FreeBSD ports build in years, so I might very likely be wrong.
I also seem to remember a series of test port builds done a long
time ago with a different value for LOCALBASE, specifically to catch
ports that do not honor the policy in this regard.

> > Once I have that working (well enough to build one port at a time) I 
> > will move on to modify bsd.port.mk itself (and related files) to utilize 
> > this mechanism for virtual installation of port dependencies during builds.
> > 
> > The full project proposal can be seen at 
> > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B30U9csgY299W59tNraSX1LYjzsba2i04OrYAUpdIZs/edit 
> > .
> > 
> > My goal is that this work can be integrated well enough into 
> > /usr/ports/Mk so that unlike Jail, no set up work should be required for 
> > using ports tree to build a set of installable packages.
> > 
> > Please let me know if you are interested in this project; feedback is 
> > appreciated.? If someone would like to provide ongoing feedback or 
> > mentorship that would be especially helpful.? Bakul Shah is my mentor 
> > officially for GSoC but I would be happy to have additional support from 
> > someone who is experienced with internals of the port infrastructure 
> > makefiles.

G'luck,
Peter

-- 
Peter Pentchev  roam@{ringlet.net,debian.org,FreeBSD.org} pp at storpool.com
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