Arch from scratch

s0lar · 2006-07-13 15:47:18

Hi there,
I am planning on installing LFS next week with a good friend, for the learning experience. But the lack of a package manager is a big drawback.
Would it be possible to get pacman running on lfs but then also make it possible to upgrade every package on my system. This includes the packages build from source before I installed pacman. Then I could make everything i686 compliant so I could bzip my files and extract it elsewhere and rebuild it for pentium4 or athlon-xp on the computer it's meant for.
I have found some wiki pages on how to install pacman from scratch and make it work on LFS but it doesn't really say how to upgrade packages allready installed. The arch creator, Judd Vinet, made archlinux kind off like this. I guess it would be a very good experience to know the ins and outs of a linux system.

ihavenoname · 2006-07-16 23:55:54

I am not quite sure how to do it, but it does sound possible. You would have to get the pacman code to figure out how it works, then you would have to either make some sort of plugin or edit the pacman code directly. At least based on what I know. In any case have fun!

s0lar · 2006-07-17 00:43:08

ihavenoname wrote:

I am not quite sure how to do it, but it does sound possible. You would have to get the pacman code to figure out how it works, then you would have to either make some sort of plugin or edit the pacman code directly. At least based on what I know. In any case have fun!

The pacman source, I can find. I start this morning but I guess it could take at least a few days till I have everything up and running.

elasticdog · 2006-07-17 00:52:09

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think you'll be able to use pacman to update the things you've installed directly from source. That's kind of the whole point of a package manager, in that it will keep a database of what files belong to which software package...when you go around that, the necessary database entries don't exist, thus pacman won't be able to tell what it needs to manage when upgrading that software. There might be a way though...

s0lar · 2006-07-17 01:11:35

elasticdog wrote:

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think you'll be able to use pacman to update the things you've installed directly from source. That's kind of the whole point of a package manager, in that it will keep a database of what files belong to which software package...when you go around that, the necessary database entries don't exist, thus pacman won't be able to tell what it needs to manage when upgrading that software. There might be a way though...

Pacman uses some kind of logs to know what is installed on your system, I guess that if I install everything in the same directory it will be possible to make pacman see it and thus updating it using pacman.
But even if that doesn't work it is not that bad. The only thing I install before the package manager are the base packages and most of the time I do not need to update those if it still works.

ihavenoname · 2006-07-17 03:51:46

Perhaps you could make a script that in some manner combines makepkg and pacman, so that it build the package for you then installs it. There are already some scripts like that out there, perhaps if you make use of them it will cut down on the time it takes (unless making your own is faster.) Once your done with the pacman-lfs if you could some how upload the code I'm sure it would help alot of people in the futere.

Cam · 2006-07-17 03:58:14

Or you could just build the pre-installed packages again with makepkg and pacman -Af to overwrite the existing files.

user · 2006-07-17 14:32:30

paco is well suited for lfs, also arch.

http://paco.sf.net

Paco is a source code package organizer for Unix/Linux systems, originally written to aid package management when installing an LFS system.

s0lar · 2006-08-13 00:25:49

It didn't really work out the way I hoped. I managed to install lfs, managed to install pacman but I can't really find out how to reinstall the stuff I compiled before installing pacman. I am going for another approach. I have 3 computers that are pentium3 or higher. A p4 desktop, a p3 laptop and a centrino laptop. Now my ideea is to make a pentium3 port. All that should be done is make packages and alter the install cd and put those packages on it instead of the i686 ones. I think a lot of users use p3, p4 or centrino so if some others also wanna help out in compiling programs or allready did, they can stop me from reinventing the wheel. I got this idea after reading about apt-build.

Cam · 2006-08-13 04:02:15

but I can't really find out how to reinstall the stuff I compiled before installing pacman.

Rebuild it as a package with makepkg and then install it with --force so it overwrites existing files.

I did something very similar to this recently but I used the Frugalware branch of pacman so I had a lot more work cutting out the FW-specific stuff they added. darcs is awesome though, maintaining another branch of software is no drama

neotuli · 2006-08-15 21:57:52

Let's see here, how to explain this.

The way Arch, or any distro for that matter, started off was as an LFS system. This system, we'll call it the bootstrap system since that's basically what it is, serves as an environment in which packages for an entire new system can be created as packages. Once the packages are all built, they can be installed as a new distro and the bootstrap system gets dumped. In other words the bootstrap system ends up being an entirely separate system from the eventual distro, and just a way to get the distro itself on its legs and running.
As I understand it, what you want to do is create something like a bootstrap system and sort of install it in/on top of itself. It seems to me that while it's possible to do, it's incredibly difficult, and PITA to say the least. As an alternative idea, what you might want to do is compile pacman from source, then compile all of BASE using pacman, and take the resulting packages and install them to another partition and in that sense make your own Arch from scratch

AndyRTR · 2006-08-15 22:23:06

why not use srcpac to build a distro on top of it? is that what he wants?

Cam · 2006-08-16 08:56:25

I think there was a script in the User Contrib forum a while ago - archbootstrap.

s0lar · 2006-08-16 22:55:09

Neotuli has it right. I want to compile all the packages from pacman from source and then create my own livecd so I can even install those packages on other computers without losing a lot of time. I actually think that this can be a supported port. I guess most of the users here have at least a pentium 3 or any other cpu that supports sse, so if arch pentium3 instead of i686 would exist a lot of users would be able to have another boost in speed.
My first idea was to install LFS using the lfs livecd then install pacman on it and install all packages over my installed applications but that would give me no benefit over a regular arch install.

Cam · 2006-08-16 23:01:02

so if arch pentium3 instead of i686 would exist a lot of users would be able to have another boost in speed.

It's a lengthy experiment so if you don't want to do it, search the forum there have been plenty of people who tried it. Install Gentoo and optimise for i386, then start again and optimise for i686 then start again and optimise the shit out of it specifically for your CPU. You'll notice a big difference between i386 and i686 but from there it's really a moot point.

If you do notice a difference chances are you're probably imagining it.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-07-13 15:47:18

Arch from scratch

#2 2006-07-16 23:55:54

Re: Arch from scratch

#3 2006-07-17 00:43:08

Re: Arch from scratch

#4 2006-07-17 00:52:09

Re: Arch from scratch

#5 2006-07-17 01:11:35

Re: Arch from scratch

#6 2006-07-17 03:51:46

Re: Arch from scratch

#7 2006-07-17 03:58:14

Re: Arch from scratch

#8 2006-07-17 14:32:30

Re: Arch from scratch

#9 2006-08-13 00:25:49

Re: Arch from scratch

#10 2006-08-13 04:02:15

Re: Arch from scratch

#11 2006-08-15 21:57:52

Re: Arch from scratch

#12 2006-08-15 22:23:06

Re: Arch from scratch

#13 2006-08-16 08:56:25

Re: Arch from scratch

#14 2006-08-16 22:55:09

Re: Arch from scratch

#15 2006-08-16 23:01:02

Re: Arch from scratch

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