svn commit: r185982 - head/usr.sbin/sysinstall

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Roman Divacky <rdivacky at freebsd.org> (from Sat, 27 Dec 2008  
10:27:36 +0100):

> On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 05:46:12PM -0800, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 5:10 PM, Alfred Perlstein  
>> <alfred at freebsd.org> wrote:
>> > * Ken Smith <kensmith at cse.Buffalo.EDU> [081226 16:13] wrote:
>> >> On Fri, 2008-12-26 at 15:46 -0800, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
>> >> > Does this mean that the user has to find the "Linux" package in the
>> >> > "add packages" area now?  If so, that seems a bit complicated to
>> >> > get started.  There's a LOT of packages.  Pardon if I'm  
>> missing something
>> >> > obvious here.
>> >>
>> >> Yes, sort of.

I would say: not really. All linux ports are supposed to depend upon  
the right infrastructure ports. So just installing an end-user linux  
port (a.g. acroread) should pull in all the necessary stuff. I don't  
see a huge need to special case "the linux package" (= linux_base-fc4  
ATM, at least form my point of view as one of the two persons taking  
care about the linuxulator infrastructure in the ports collection).

>> >> I've asked portmgr@ to help with setting things up so we've got a couple
>> >> of new meta packages that help users set up a usable workstation
>> >> relatively painlessly.  They've said we can work together with the Gnome
>> >> and KDE folks to try and get that set up.  I'm not sure at this point if
>> >> Linux emulation will be part of that or not, we haven't gotten quite
>> >> that far yet.  And we'll do something to make those meta-packages
>> >> relatively easy to find.  For example without something along those
>> >> lines a user may just select the "gnome2" metapackage thinking they'll
>> >> get a usable workstation but at least as of the last time I did
>> >> something like that you don't quite wind up with a usable workstation
>> >> (xorg-server is missing for example :-/).
>> >>
>> >> That said this has sort of been threatened for quite a while now, and
>> >> having sysinstall not care about any packages before it hits what is
>> >> currently its "Do you want to browse all the packages" section is needed
>> >> if we're talking about not including pre-built packages with the release
>> >> itself and that sort of thing.  We're just setting it up so all packages
>> >> get treated as packages instead of some being intertwined in earlier
>> >> phases of sysinstall.
>> >
>> > OK, that makes sense.  Please track it though, it would be bad to wind up
>> > "hiding" Linux compat from users under a huge package selection.

I think it would be better if people would go into more detail if they  
talk about kldloading the linux module, or if they talk about  
installing the linuxulator-userland-infrastructure (linux_base-XXX,  
linux-x11-libs, ...).

>>     Yes, but it'd be nicer for linux compatibility to point to actual
>> working linux emulators instead of long-defunct packages (the Redhat
>> emulation package -- bleh).
>>     I'm all for improving the linux compat layer packaging -- thanks Ken!

You should come over to emulation@, there's a major part of the linux  
infrastructure ports work explained in the archives. Unfortunately I  
haven't seen any message from Ken there regarding the issues he sees  
with linux stuff.

> we've switched to 2.6 emulation on default in -current so we are able to
> use newer fedora distro. the problem here is that there is no release
> freebsd with default 2.6 emulation, hence the default port stays at fc4
>
> that's going to change

To add a little bit on this:

An update to add more recent fedora bits is waiting for the ports  
slush to be over. When those bits have hit the tree, we can have a  
look how to pick a more recent fedora release for systems where the  
2.6.16 emulation is enabled or on by default. Nothing is set in stone  
there as there's nothing in the ports tree to experiment with.

BTW: Roman implicitly told above, that FC4 is the last Fedora release  
which is able to work with our linux 2.4 emulation which we have in  
all our releases. 8.0 will be the first release with 2.6.16 emulation  
by default. AFAIK the *at() functions are not MFCed (and probably some  
other important stuff), so apart from the POLA reason to not change  
the default on a -stable branch, we also have a technical reason to  
not enable 2.6.16 on 7-stable.

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
Gilbert's Discovery:
	Any attempt to use the new super glues results in the two pieces
	sticking to your thumb and index finger rather than to each other.

http://www.Leidinger.net    Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7
http://www.FreeBSD.org       netchild @ FreeBSD.org  : PGP ID = 72077137