How to select which packages to download

[Joe-73]

Hi,

I read the About page, the FAQ and the handbook through chapter 4, and
was under the impression that I would be able to choose which packages
got downloaded, built, etc.  I then checked out the 7.0 branch and did
./scripts/Config.  I chose Generic, Minimalistic and was therefore
expecting some screen or other mechanism to select which packages I wanted.

I then tried ./scripts/Download -list and it reported it (presumably)
was going to download 3279 tarballs.  Since I don't want to wait for
hours and use up GBs of disk space for packages that I'll never build, I
was reluctant to do a ./script/Download -required without first knowing
what packages will be downloaded (hopefully not all).  However, when I
tried, it started downloading packages that I don't need (or want) such
as dietlibc and embutils.

In addition, when I read that T2 "package configurations usually point
to the latest packages", I thought that it would still allow one to
select which package versions one could build with (since many times,
the latest is not the greatest--particularly in combination with other
dependent packages).

Is there a way to only select only certain packages and particular
versions of packages?

Joe



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[Rene Rebe]

Hi,

On 12.03.2008, at 13:04, Joe wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I read the About page, the FAQ and the handbook through chapter 4,  
> and was under the impression that I would be able to choose which  
> packages got downloaded, built, etc.  I then checked out the 7.0  
> branch and did ./scripts/Config.  I chose Generic, Minimalistic and  
> was therefore expecting some screen or other mechanism to select  
> which packages I wanted.

By selecting generic + the minimal package selection template you  
already
specified the packages you want. For generic / minimal that are just a  
few,
150 or so.

I think -list lists all package, -list-missing should give you a real  
overview.
You could also just run Build-Target, it would download them as-needed.

You can select packages in the expert option (custom package selection)
as targets usually define what to build, or you could start your  
custom target.

> I then tried ./scripts/Download -list and it reported it  
> (presumably) was going to download 3279 tarballs.  Since I don't  
> want to wait for hours and use up GBs of disk space for packages  
> that I'll never build, I was reluctant to do a ./script/Download -
> required without first knowing what packages will be downloaded  
> (hopefully not all).  However, when I tried, it started downloading  
> packages that I don't need (or want) such as dietlibc and embutils.

By default T2 uses an optimized initrd and for this uses dietlibc and  
embutils. But
as they are tiny they should be just a tiny percentage of other must-
have packages,
such as gcc.

-list-missing should give you the same list as -required would download.

Note, that recent T2 versions automatically download missing packages
during Build-Target and Emerge-Pkg and thus you only need to manually
run Download for dial-up setups or if you want to make sure you got all
sources before building.

> In addition, when I read that T2 "package configurations usually  
> point to the latest packages", I thought that it would still allow  
> one to select which package versions one could build with (since  
> many times, the latest is not the greatest--particularly in  
> combination with other dependent packages).
>
> Is there a way to only select only certain packages and particular  
> versions of packages?


We tried the "other versions" route years ago, but it quickly becomes a
version hell where most combinations rarely build.

For stable, known to work versions, we have the T2 stable trees
(6.0, 7.0, ...).

Trunk is to ready the next generation, which after some upstream
version releases and required adaption becomes 8.0 (sometime
this year).

Yours,

--
   René Rebe - ExactCODE GmbH - Europe, Germany, Berlin
   http://exactcode.de | http://t2-project.org | http://rene.rebe.name


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[Joe-73]

Hi René,

René Rebe wrote:
>
> I think -list lists all package, -list-missing should give you a real
> overview.
I'm afraid not:

$ ./scripts/Download -list-missing | wc -l
3279
$ head config/default/config
#
# T2 7.0-stable Config File
#
export SDECFG_TARGET='generic'
export SDECFG_PKGSEL_TPL='minimal'
export SDECFG_IMAGE='install'
export SDECFG_ARCH='x86'
export SDECFG_X86_OPT='pentium4'

> By default T2 uses an optimized initrd and for this uses dietlibc and
> embutils. But
> as they are tiny they should be just a tiny percentage of other
> must-have packages,
> such as gcc.
So, how do I, for example, choose sysvinit instead?  Would
./scripts/Build-Target sysvinit bypass the building of initrd and its
dependencies or do I have to do something else?  And if I wanted to say,
use FSF binutils instead of the kernel.org package, would I have to
write my own package description?

Joe


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[Rene Rebe]

Hi,

On 14.03.2008, at 01:50, Joe wrote:

> Hi René,
>
> René Rebe wrote:
>>
>> I think -list lists all package, -list-missing should give you a  
>> real overview.
> I'm afraid not:
>
> $ ./scripts/Download -list-missing | wc -l
> 3279
> $ head config/default/config
> #
> # T2 7.0-stable Config File
> #
> export SDECFG_TARGET='generic'
> export SDECFG_PKGSEL_TPL='minimal'
> export SDECFG_IMAGE='install'
> export SDECFG_ARCH='x86'
> export SDECFG_X86_OPT='pentium4'

Hm, interesting, I just verified it should work. Which distribution  
are you
building on? Maybe there is some AWK/SED GNU'ism we use and thus
the package selection not processed correctly?

>> By default T2 uses an optimized initrd and for this uses dietlibc  
>> and embutils. But
>> as they are tiny they should be just a tiny percentage of other  
>> must-have packages,
>> such as gcc.
> So, how do I, for example, choose sysvinit instead?  Would ./scripts/
> Build-Target sysvinit bypass the building of initrd and its  
> dependencies or do I have to do something else?  And if I wanted to  
> say, use FSF binutils instead of the kernel.org package, would I  
> have to write my own package description?

The initrd would not disable sysvinit. In fact the generic target does  
use it. You could
select alternative init systems in the expert section at the config  
entry about the
system C library. If you do not want our kind of very slim and module  
auto-loading
initrd then you would need to disable the mkinitrd and the few tiny  
tools it would
put in there (diskutil, embutils, pdksh) in the expert config section  
at: custom
package selection.

Please note that the targets do sometimes contain code that relies on  
some of this
feature, which is why you are best off first trying a predefined  
target to learn T2 and
later start your fresh target if you want to use alternative C libs  
and init systems or
do even more modifications.

For binutils we indeed only have the kernel.org flavour (as I wrote in  
some other
mail we decided against the multitude of versions / flavours some  
years ago).
However, if you do a target, you could override/overload the package  
in your
target to use the vanilla FSF binutils flavour.

http://www.t2-project.org/handbook/html/t2.target.modifications.html

Yours,

--
   René Rebe - ExactCODE GmbH - Europe, Germany, Berlin
   http://exactcode.de | http://t2-project.org | http://rene.rebe.name


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