Desperately seeking MORE packagers - please join hands

[frazelle09]

Nuts, i'm confused again...

Actually, you don't need one packaging environment. You need two, because most packages need building and testing in both 64 and 32 bit to ensure they will build correctly in both. These can be virtual machines, though I find them rather slow. You also need two corresponding testing partitions to ensure packages install and remove correctly. You don't want to mess up your main machine or your packaging environment if a test install breaks the system. This means you have to be quite serious, even if you only intend to package occasionally when time permits.

Do the four environs referred to above mean two for 32 bit and two for 64 bit?

If all i have is a 32 bit machine it appears that i would still need to install two new partitions - correct?, one for building and one for testing.

Have a grand afternoon! 

[ghostbunny]

Nuts, i'm confused again...

Actually, you don't need one packaging environment. You need two, because most packages need building and testing in both 64 and 32 bit to ensure they will build correctly in both. These can be virtual machines, though I find them rather slow. You also need two corresponding testing partitions to ensure packages install and remove correctly. You don't want to mess up your main machine or your packaging environment if a test install breaks the system. This means you have to be quite serious, even if you only intend to package occasionally when time permits.

Do the four environs referred to above mean two for 32 bit and two for 64 bit?

If all i have is a 32 bit machine it appears that i would still need to install two new partitions - correct?, one for building and one for testing.

Have a grand afternoon! 

That's not possible in all cases if you have a computer which just supports the 32bit architecture command set you are not able to install a 64bit system. You can try this in a virtual box but in my case the computer was going incredibly slow. (32bit host with 64bit guest)

[sling-shot]

A dedicated PCLinuxOS person needs the following partitions in my opinion :
1. PCLinuxOS 32 Main -  Stable install.
2. PCLinuxOS 32 Main Testing - Stable and with the same configuration as the Main install but to act as a guinea pig for updates (stable updates and not testing updates)
3. PCLinuxOS 32 Testing - Testing installation. Used to test the software in testing section.
4. PCLinuxOS 32 MiniMe - For creating mylivecd for testing base Linux software such as hardware detection on boot.
5. PCLinuxOS 32 Packager - For creating 32 bit packages.
6. PCLinuxOS 32 Packager Testing - For testing self built packages.
7. PCLinuxOS 64 Testing - As there is no 64 bit official release yet.
8. PCLinuxOS 64 Packager - For creating 64 bit packages.
9. 2 Blank partitions - Reserved for future use.
10. 2 partitions - For other comparable OSes / distributions to check hardware compatibility etc.

[daniel]

My opinion is...
Jump in the clear water to learn, nothing other had i tried, as i was packing my tool systeminfo...

[ghostbunny]

A dedicated PCLinuxOS person needs the following partitions in my opinion :
1. PCLinuxOS 32 Main -  Stable install.
2. PCLinuxOS 32 Main Testing - Stable and with the same configuration as the Main install but to act as a guinea pig for updates (stable updates and not testing updates)
3. PCLinuxOS 32 Testing - Testing installation. Used to test the software in testing section.
4. PCLinuxOS 32 MiniMe - For creating mylivecd for testing base Linux software such as hardware detection on boot.
5. PCLinuxOS 32 Packager - For creating 32 bit packages.
6. PCLinuxOS 32 Packager Testing - For testing self built packages.
7. PCLinuxOS 64 Testing - As there is no 64 bit official release yet.
8. PCLinuxOS 64 Packager - For creating 64 bit packages.
9. 2 Blank partitions - Reserved for future use.
10. 2 partitions - For other comparable OSes / distributions to check hardware compatibility etc.

seems like i need a bigger hdd

[sling-shot]

Right now, I do not have so many. But I do have 6 separate partitions of PCLinuxOS. And 1 of Chakra.

[sling-shot]

Nuts, i'm confused again...

...........

Do the four environs referred to above mean two for 32 bit and two for 64 bit?

If all i have is a 32 bit machine it appears that i would still need to install two new partitions - correct?, one for building and one for testing.

Have a grand afternoon! 

Yes. It should be the safe way to go. Testing is obviously a risky affair. Even packaging has something to consider. You will need to install dependencies and sometimes it is easy to install software but difficult to remove because it might ask to remove many other software too.

[ghostbunny]

Right now, I do not have so many. But I do have 6 separate partitions of PCLinuxOS. And 1 of Chakra.

i personally prefer a more risky config. my packaging machine is also my work machine (i just installed eclipse and subversion) so after work i commit everything to the university server and then i have no trouble if a package breaks the installation. So i see also the behavior of the package in a quite normal installation which is probably used by many people. i have three other partitions for several remaster projects and not really space for more systems and my system is to low level to run  packaging tasks in a virtual box. I think somewhere it is the packagers choice to chose how to setup his packaging/test boxes the main thing is that the packaging system is kept clean from devel packages (except the 5 or 6 default ones which have to be there that the system doesn't break e.g. ncurses-devel) and other packaging related things like docbook packages and some other things to, to track down dependencies correctly when you are creating a new package.

Just my opinion i think the other advanced packagers will have a different one.

[pinoc]

the idea is great but please don't scare off new volunteers because in most cases, packaging is not that difficult. 
From my personal experience: I have never learnt or done any C-programming. I learned some basic Bash-coding by googling for what I wanted a program to do, addlocale, lomanager, getvirtualbox, and others were done this way. Then these scripts had to be packaged but I had zero knowledge about packaging -> at first Tex and Neal did that for me but then I thought I should do that myself, and mostly it is not that difficult, just some patience, determination, plus you learn something, so: set up the build environment as instructed by Neal, read the posts in the Packagers section, take a simple program that needs updating, and try, play, ask, test, etc. until it works. Do that for other simple programs until you feel more comfortable. A great part of packaging is just updating existing programs and luckily that usually works without problems. Then there is always time to tinker with the more tricky ones...

And I do not have 35 partitions but simply 2 virtual machines for building packages, one for 32bit and one for 64bit, each of them with a separate /home partition so in case I screw up completely I can quickly do a fresh install and keep all my sources/specs in place.

It really is not THAT difficult, dedication and willingness are the key requirements, just do it! 
-p.

[Neal ManBear]

Well said, p. Thank you.     

[Yankee]

http://www.pclinuxoshelp.com/index.php/Packaging_for_PCLinuxOS

The idea should be to look at packaging from a dummy's perspective.

Bookmarked the above.   Whatever is pertinent, current, and technically correct should
be there.   Nice job.

[Yankee]

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-rpm1/index.html


Here's something from the other monopoly.   

The principal benefit of open source software is...

[kjpetrie]

Not a bad introduction from IBM. I'd disagree with one thing I saw there - not to include a path in the definition of source. I always understood that should be given as a URL so future packagers could know where to download it.

[sling-shot]

Sorry everyone for the delay in any updates. I am unable to get a concentrating parcel of free time to work on this.

A post in the initial page of this thread lead me to create this page on our wiki about Repositories and Sections and Mirrors.
I believe this should be a part of the initial reading for potential packagers too.
Kindly go through and comment here http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,111512.0.html

Once I have feedback on this page, I will further update the Packaging page on the wiki.

[Yankee]

Not a bad introduction from IBM. I'd disagree with one thing I saw there - not to include a path in the definition of source. I always understood that should be given as a URL so future packagers could know where to download it.

That's in the spec file I presume.    I was looking for a source last night, couldn't find it
anywhere.    Check the spec file of course.

There's 3 parts to that series, that is only the first part.   Goes all the way to handling
dependencies.   Looks like one could do some medium-level packages then.   There's
some advanced articles that aren't included of course.    Need to put these in my
current reading bookmarks.

regards,

FF