Arch is good, but...

lloeki · 2007-12-13 06:36:34

... ABS is the cherry atop the cake.

at least compared to this.

F · 2007-12-13 07:10:58

ABS is so, so sweet, indeed!

bender02 · 2007-12-13 14:47:24

Not so much compared to this...
(Just kidding... arch+ABS is the best)

dolby · 2007-12-13 21:07:48

the abs could be much much better imo

first step to make it better would be splitting it from the pacman package. thats gonna happen probably before the release of pacman 3.1.
next it requires a lot of features. the most important imo, one that in fbsd ports its already available, is having the ability to grab eg. extra/x11 but not extra/games.
the above is the reason i dont use but prefer to do all things manually

mcmillan · 2007-12-13 21:50:38

Could you say a bit more about how you think abs would work better separate from pacman. I'll admit I don't use abs much, but one of the things I like about pacman is that I can use the same tool in different situations.

Misfit138 · 2007-12-14 01:08:52

mcmillan wrote:

Could you say a bit more about how you think abs would work better separate from pacman. I'll admit I don't use abs much, but one of the things I like about pacman is that I can use the same tool in different situations.

Agreed...I thought/think of it as a huge advantage that I can install the .pkg.tar.gz with pacman when I'm done building it...or am I misunderstanding Dolby's point?

Last edited by Misfit138 (2007-12-14 01:09:16)

bender02 · 2007-12-14 01:40:38

dolby wrote:

next it requires a lot of features. the most important imo, one that in fbsd ports its already available, is having the ability to grab eg. extra/x11 but not extra/games.
the above is the reason i dont use but prefer to do all things manually

I personally tend to have the whole abs locally; it's about 50M, (whole extra is 23M), so takes little space in today's measures (unless you need to *really* save space, like on some servers). I do the same on FreeBSD.

skottish · 2007-12-14 02:20:26

On my box:

[skottish@localhost ~]$ du -ch /var/abs | grep total
82M     total

It may not seem like a lot of space, but if it serves no purpose for you to have the whole tree, then why have it?

Last edited by skottish (2007-12-14 02:22:30)

dolby · 2007-12-14 03:49:52

mcmillan wrote:

Could you say a bit more about how you think abs would work better separate from pacman. I'll admit I don't use abs much, but one of the things I like about pacman is that I can use the same tool in different situations.

that will happen really soon according to pacman devs. pacman is a totally different thing than abs. plus pacman is not Archlinux specific. abs is..

bender02 · 2007-12-14 05:33:06

skottish wrote:

It may not seem like a lot of space, but if it serves no purpose for you to have the whole tree, then why have it?

When I want to take a look at the PKGBUILD of a particular package, I have it right there. Pulling a group (say extra/games) for me is the same as pulling the whole extra. What I *would* appreciate is that I could pull just files of one particular package, so that there is really no overhead.
BTW, my whole /var/abs is also about 80M, because I didnt count /var/abs/local. And that is the only directory in /var/abs which might substantially grow

lloeki · 2007-12-14 14:16:00

I fail to grasp something coherent here. I can't see how pacman and abs are not tied together when the sole purpose of abs is to build pacman packages.

I mean, what do you call abs:
- the ABS tree?
- the abs command?
- the PKGBUILD/makepkg pair?

so what do you mean that abs and pacman will be decoupled?

what's more, isn't the abs command just a wrapper to the csup/cvsup command? can't you just csup part of the ABS tree?

as for the ports parallel, well yes and no, because the absolute KISS principle of pacman and abs is really positive (to my knowledge, ports being more like portage, hence a tad more complex)

Last edited by lloeki (2007-12-14 14:17:51)

byte · 2007-12-14 17:39:11

Run pacman -Ql pacman | grep abs. It's only about moving those out the package, because they're specific to Arch, while pacman isn't.

finferflu · 2007-12-14 22:45:02

Once I thought I had understood what ABS was, now I think I never got it

Wasn't ABS the building system? And how can you use it without Pacman? If ABS creates a Pacman package, how can you use it without it? Namely, how can you have Arch without Pacman and still use ABS?

byte · 2007-12-15 01:57:53

Guys. It's not about removing anything. It's only about decoupling some files from the pacman sources, to make it more independent.
Pacman will always be the Arch Linux package manager, and there will always be a script called 'abs', to fetch the build scripts making up Arch Linux out of some version control system.

phrakture · 2007-12-15 02:01:49

finferflu wrote:

Once I thought I had understood what ABS was, now I think I never got it
Wasn't ABS the building system? And how can you use it without Pacman? If ABS creates a Pacman package, how can you use it without it? Namely, how can you have Arch without Pacman and still use ABS?

Correction - makepkg creates the package. makepkg and pacman are, and always will be, partners in crime.

ABS on the other hand, is used to give you the PKGBUILDs that are part of archlinux.

ABS is the Arch-specific part. The "stuff we use".

lloeki · 2007-12-15 08:45:14

okay, to me, given the name 'Build System' was referring to makepkg and stuff... then the Arch Build System is not really a Build System... it's more of a repository, like the AUR.
is a name change planned? is a sort of 'grand unification' with the AUR planned?

karreman · 2007-12-15 08:58:16

skottish wrote:

On my box:
[skottish@localhost ~]$ du -ch /var/abs | grep total
82M     total
It may not seem like a lot of space, but if it serves no purpose for you to have the whole tree, then why have it?

Off-topic: du -sh /var/abs gets the job done without the grep

xd-0 · 2007-12-15 13:38:22

Yesterday (or perhaps early this morning,, can't remember) I found that some packages I wanted couldn't be found using pacman and the repositories.
So I started to read about ABS, PKGBUILD and makepkg and I must say, I love using them together to create packages for pacman. It's easy to use, easy to maintain and most of all it's very easy to understand how to build a package from source, compared to say deb.
Never the less, I still need to get familiar with fixing the right dependencies and other stuff, but that's what makes it fun

pelle.k · 2007-12-15 17:18:05

If an application isn't in the AUR, you can still look at the README or INSTALL file in the application source to find out dependencies. Also, i find it helpful to look at debian "control" files, and rpm .SPEC files if the application is packaged for another distro.

Misfit138 · 2007-12-15 17:37:55

xd-0 wrote:

Yesterday (or perhaps early this morning,, can't remember) I found that some packages I wanted couldn't be found using pacman and the repositories.
So I started to read about ABS, PKGBUILD and makepkg and I must say, I love using them together to create packages for pacman. It's easy to use, easy to maintain and most of all it's very easy to understand how to build a package from source, compared to say deb.
Never the less, I still need to get familiar with fixing the right dependencies and other stuff, but that's what makes it fun

If a pkg you are building needs a dependency, just build with makepkg -csi
-c cleans up leftover files from build
-s grabs needed dependencies through pacman
-i installs with pacman all in one shot, without having to do pacman -U foo.pkg.tar.gz afterwards

xd-0 · 2007-12-15 19:27:25

Thanks for the answers but the main problem is when a dependency is missing in the repository and must be downloaded as source from a website and installed before the package itself.
For example the musi-cplayer eina have a dependency (libeina) that must be installed. I would like to specify in the PKGBUILD that it should download and install that, and directly after do the same with eina. And also remove it automatically when I remove eina. Not to do one packagebuild for each. But all will become clear when I have tried it out some more, as I said, that is part of the fun

ps. Sorry for stealing the thread

cpu · 2007-12-26 17:52:02

For me only problem with Arch is sometimes slow packages update - take for example Azureus or even Amarok... and that's only problem for me - everything else is fantastic especially AUR and ABS

oli · 2007-12-26 21:16:18

>For me only problem with Arch is sometimes slow packages update

Just try Debian instead or $distri, it's easy to change an outdated package and it's easy to help

Mantaar · 2007-12-26 22:08:09

One thing I'm really amazed of is the easiness of writing PKGBUILDs... great thing! I still have quite some work to do, but when I'm done, I'll proof-read my custom PKGBUILDs and put them in AUR - I really think that this relative ease of making a package will contribute a lot to Arch as a whole when the distro attracts more members...

... although I don't know if I would like Arch to become very much bigger. It's OK now, and coming over from Gentoo and Debian, I really like that the daily 'new posts' on the forum are less than three pages long...

One question though: how do you guys keep track of it when to update packages downloaded from AUR (or abs for that matter)?

Mikko777 · 2007-12-26 22:13:42

Mantaar wrote:

One question though: how do you guys keep track of it when to update packages downloaded from AUR (or abs for that matter)?

yaourt!

Arch Linux

#1 2007-12-13 06:36:34

Arch is good, but...

#2 2007-12-13 07:10:58

Re: Arch is good, but...

#3 2007-12-13 14:47:24

Re: Arch is good, but...

#4 2007-12-13 21:07:48

Re: Arch is good, but...

#5 2007-12-13 21:50:38

Re: Arch is good, but...

#6 2007-12-14 01:08:52

Re: Arch is good, but...

#7 2007-12-14 01:40:38

Re: Arch is good, but...

#8 2007-12-14 02:20:26

Re: Arch is good, but...

#9 2007-12-14 03:49:52

Re: Arch is good, but...

#10 2007-12-14 05:33:06

Re: Arch is good, but...

#11 2007-12-14 14:16:00

Re: Arch is good, but...

#12 2007-12-14 17:39:11

Re: Arch is good, but...

#13 2007-12-14 22:45:02

Re: Arch is good, but...

#14 2007-12-15 01:57:53

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#15 2007-12-15 02:01:49

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#16 2007-12-15 08:45:14

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#17 2007-12-15 08:58:16

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#18 2007-12-15 13:38:22

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#19 2007-12-15 17:18:05

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#20 2007-12-15 17:37:55

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#21 2007-12-15 19:27:25

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#22 2007-12-26 17:52:02

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#23 2007-12-26 21:16:18

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#24 2007-12-26 22:08:09

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#25 2007-12-26 22:13:42

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