larch-7 testing

Moo-Crumpus · 2010-05-06 11:09:24

I wanted to 'larchify' my current arch installation, and end up reading a message a package called larch-live had been missed. But there is no package named 'larch-live'.

-- Edit --

Just found out that the aur package is not the current one, and for sure larch-live is missing. But there is a repo one can use:

[larch]
Server = ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/larch/larch7/i686
# There must be a blank line after this!

Last edited by Moo-Crumpus (2010-05-06 11:23:29)

Moo-Crumpus · 2010-05-06 13:25:00

Well, works just fine.

Last edited by Moo-Crumpus (2010-05-06 14:24:00)

gradgrind · 2010-05-07 14:32:35

I'm sure I've said this before, but anyway:

larch isn't really suitable for inclusion in the AUR (at least, not at the moment). My recommendation for using it is via the larch-setup script, and using the package repository on berlios.

mickael9 · 2010-07-16 18:02:08

Some thoughts about the latest 7.2 version :
* in live_part.py, the (options, args) = parser.parse_args() should be moved after the last add_option
* can't install grub to a fat partition ? why not ?
* the GUI doesn't work at all, I get a the following errors :
Unknown widget: :tabs
Bad item in layout of ':larch': ':tabs'

gradgrind · 2010-07-17 10:54:11

mickael9 wrote:

Some thoughts about the latest 7.2 version :
* in live_part.py, the (options, args) = parser.parse_args() should be moved after the last add_option

In the version I'm looking at (7.2.15), it is.

mickael9 wrote:

* can't install grub to a fat partition ? why not ?

That was mainly to keep it simple - I hoped the combinations GRUB/ext2 and syslinux/fat would be adequate - is there a reason you would really want to use GRUB with fat?

mickael9 wrote:

* the GUI doesn't work at all, I get a the following errors :
Unknown widget: :tabs
Bad item in layout of ':larch': ':tabs'

I can't reproduce this on 7.2.15, so if you are using that version please let me know and we can seek further.

mickael9 · 2010-07-17 17:33:15

I pulled the 7.2 branch from git which is 7.2.15 I guess, also, I have the same problems using the archlinux package which is 7.2.15.

The optparse error can still be seen on the git version :
http://git.berlios.de/cgi-bin/gitweb.cg … s/7.2#l209

Concerning GRUB on FAT, I just prefer GRUB over syslinux, and it was possible in the previous version to install grub on a FAT partition

Last edited by mickael9 (2010-07-17 17:42:37)

gradgrind · 2010-07-18 14:36:47

mickael9 wrote:

I pulled the 7.2 branch from git which is 7.2.15 I guess, also, I have the same problems using the archlinux package which is 7.2.15.
The optparse error can still be seen on the git version :
http://git.berlios.de/cgi-bin/gitweb.cg … s/7.2#l209

I misunderstood you - I see what you mean now ...
Ironic: "# To avoid error messages"
Anyway, I've uploaded 7.2.16 now.

mickael9 wrote:

Concerning GRUB on FAT, I just prefer GRUB over syslinux, and it was possible in the previous version to install grub on a FAT partition

And for some reason you prefer fat to ext2?

As to the gui problem, maybe you could help me trace it? I don't think the actual problem is with the ':tabs' widget, something must have gone wrong before that. Are you running in a terminal, via './larch', as suggested? Is there any other output?

mickael9 · 2010-07-18 15:43:32

I'm willing to install larch on my usb stick which is FAT, and without formatting it.
What is exactly the problem with installing GRUB on FAT ? I tried to remove the error message and it worked (probably because I'm not formatting though, I guess it would fail at fs creation)

larch doesn't output anything to the terminal
Upon running it, I first get a "Unkown widget: :tabs" warning, then a "Bad item in layout of ':larch': ':tabs'" error
The main window then shows up with only the View Log, Help and Quit buttons
I tried running it as another user (with XFCE4 instead of KDE) and the same thing happens (I also noticed that there are a bunch of error windows that open and close very fast after the second one)

I looked a bit at the code and my first impression is that catching all exceptions eg "try ... except:" is a bad habit
You should always specify the type of the exception you want to catch (unless you really need to catch all exceptions)
For instance if you except a lookup in a dictionnary to fail, you would write "except KeyError"
You might want to read the PEP 8 : http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

Also, I noticed larch copies files from syslinux to boot directory even if you choose to install GRUB.
It also keeps some *_0 files

Last edited by mickael9 (2010-07-18 17:31:34)

gradgrind · 2010-07-18 17:53:41

mickael9 wrote:

I'm willing to install larch on my usb stick which is FAT, and without formatting it.
What is exactly the problem with installing GRUB on FAT ? I tried to remove the error message and it worked (probably because I'm not formatting though, I guess it would fail at fs creation)

There's probably no problem, I've just never used this combination and can't really imagine wanting to do so. I'll see if I can increase the flexibility without compromising the simplicity too much.

mickael9 wrote:

larch doesn't output anything to the terminal
Upon running it, I first get a "Unkown widget: :tabs" warning, then a "Bad item in layout of ':larch': ':tabs'" error
The main window then shows up with only the View Log, Help and Quit buttons
I tried running it as another user (with XFCE4 instead of KDE) and the same thing happens (I also noticed that there are a bunch of error windows that open and close very fast after the second one)

It's connected with the latest pyqt update - I'll try to trace the problem. pyqt-4.7.3 works.

mickael9 wrote:

I looked a bit at the code and my first impression is that catching all exceptions eg "try ... except:" is a bad habit
You should always specify the type of the exception you want to catch (unless you really need to catch all exceptions)
For instance if you except a lookup in a dictionnary to fail, you would write "except KeyError"
You might want to read the PEP 8 : http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

I know about this, and I probably have been a bit lax in places. I hope I am not suppressing programming error reports by doing this, but that is certainly a possibility. If you notice any really dodgy places, please let me know. In some cases the only interesting thing is whether the operation failed, so a typed catch would be superfluous - but of course one can easily overlook problem areas when one does this. Sometimes exceptions are not suppressed, but simply presented in a context-dependent wrapper, to help locate problems.

mickael9 wrote:

Also, I noticed larch copies files from syslinux to boot directory even if you choose to install GRUB.
It also keeps some *_0 files

This is probably intended - some of this behaviour is covered in the documentation. The installation of the files for both bootloaders enables later copying of the medium including a change of bootloader, at rather little expense. If you find strange looking files which are not covered in the documentation please let me know.

mickael9 · 2010-07-18 18:44:31

Well, compiling pyqt 4.7.3 ... (that's looooong !)

Edit : DAMN !

In file included from /home/mickael/build/pyqt/src/PyQt-x11-gpl-4.7.3/sip/QtXml/qxml.sip:120:0:
/usr/include/QtCore/qscopedpointer.h: In member function 'QXmlParseException& QXmlParseException::operator=(const QXmlParseException&)':
/usr/include/QtCore/qscopedpointer.h:170:5: error: 'QScopedPointer<T, Cleanup>& QScopedPointer<T, Cleanup>::operator=(const QScopedPointer<T, Cleanup>&) [with T = QXmlParseExceptionPrivate, Cleanup = QScopedPointerDeleter<QXmlParseExceptionPrivate>, QScopedPointer<T, Cleanup> = QScopedPointer<QXmlParseExceptionPrivate>]' is private
/usr/include/QtXml/qxml.h:193:1: error: within this context
sipQtXmlQXmlParseException.cpp: In function 'void assign_QXmlParseException(void*, Py_ssize_t, const void*)':
sipQtXmlQXmlParseException.cpp:216:117: note: synthesized method 'QXmlParseException& QXmlParseException::operator=(const QXmlParseException&)' first required here
make[1]: *** [sipQtXmlQXmlParseException.o] Error 1

I'm going to try to find a binary package ...

Edit 2 : I can confirm that the GUI works with 4.7.3

Last edited by mickael9 (2010-07-18 19:21:24)

gradgrind · 2010-07-19 10:44:01

I found the problem with pyqt-4.7.4. It has started setting __len__ attributes on some widgets, which means they can now evaluate as boolean False. That's a bit of a dark corner of python to which I haven't paid enough attention, so although I've now (larch-7.2.17) fixed the places that were preventing the GUI from starting, there may be more places in the the code where something like 'if widget: ...blah...' fails. Please let me know if any more problems turn up.

gradgrind · 2010-07-19 19:28:52

Well, I found some more problems myself, so I've uploaded larch-7.2.18.

mickael9 · 2010-09-17 22:15:03

Hi

I just had an idea : it would be really awesome to be able to use a pacman replacement / wrapper (eg : clyde) for installing the live system.

That way, it would be easier to install packages from the AUR

gradgrind · 2010-09-19 16:00:33

mickael9 wrote:

Hi
I just had an idea : it would be really awesome to be able to use a pacman replacement / wrapper (eg : clyde) for installing the live system.
That way, it would be easier to install packages from the AUR

In a way I agree, but it would involve quite a bit of testing and some code changes to handle the different output format (for which I don't have the time at the moment), and I wonder how stable and well maintained the alternatives are. Also I am not sure that I would use this feature myself. I think I prefer to build AUR packages to a local repository and use that (at least, so far I have never used one of these alternatives).

mickael9 · 2010-09-29 19:53:49

Also, the GUI allows you to do some pacman tasks (eg syncing the db), but not updating the system.
It's possible to cheat a little, using the sync option and passing "-- -u" but it's quite hacky.

gradgrind · 2010-10-01 08:28:42

mickael9 wrote:

Also, the GUI allows you to do some pacman tasks (eg syncing the db), but not updating the system.
It's possible to cheat a little, using the sync option and passing "-- -u" but it's quite hacky.

I added a pacman -Su button some time ago because someone else requested it, but it seems I never got around to uploading the latest changes. Sorry about that, I've been very busy recently. Anyway, I've updated it now.

mickael9 · 2010-10-02 15:41:06

Nice

It doesn't work though :
302 def updateall(self, *files):
303 return self.pacmancall('-Su')

This should be :
302 def updateall(self, *files):
303 return self.pacmancall('-Su', '')

I see you're starting to work on larch8, do you have some kind of roadmap ?

Last edited by mickael9 (2010-10-02 19:10:54)

gradgrind · 2010-10-04 11:14:46

mickael9 wrote:

Nice
It doesn't work though :
302 def updateall(self, *files):
303 return self.pacmancall('-Su')
This should be :
302 def updateall(self, *files):
303 return self.pacmancall('-Su', '')
I see you're starting to work on larch8, do you have some kind of roadmap ?

Indeed, sorry about that. It should be fixed now.

I've just started thinking about larch8. I would like to simplify some things, including data persistence, and I'll probably drop some things I see as superfluous. The main target is USB-sticks (and similar devices).
The main change will be the handling of the aufs overlays, I'd like to simplify this so that the writable layer is actually on a physical device (normally the boot device) - if running in read-write mode. Then there would be no need for special recompression or merging of overlays at shutdown. It should work more like a normal Arch system (except that the bulk of the system is in squashfs).
At the moment I'm planning to support only iso/sys/extlinux as bootloader - old grub is slowly going out of fashion and new grub is still too complicated for me, the syslinux family seems to work well, and I'm using it on all my machines.
As always, I've no idea when it will be ready ...

Arch Linux

#151 2010-05-06 11:09:24

Re: larch-7 testing

#152 2010-05-06 13:25:00

Re: larch-7 testing

#153 2010-05-07 14:32:35

Re: larch-7 testing

#154 2010-07-16 18:02:08

Re: larch-7 testing

#155 2010-07-17 10:54:11

Re: larch-7 testing

#156 2010-07-17 17:33:15

Re: larch-7 testing

#157 2010-07-18 14:36:47

Re: larch-7 testing

#158 2010-07-18 15:43:32

Re: larch-7 testing

#159 2010-07-18 17:53:41

Re: larch-7 testing

#160 2010-07-18 18:44:31

Re: larch-7 testing

#161 2010-07-19 10:44:01

Re: larch-7 testing

#162 2010-07-19 19:28:52

Re: larch-7 testing

#163 2010-09-17 22:15:03

Re: larch-7 testing

#164 2010-09-19 16:00:33

Re: larch-7 testing

#165 2010-09-29 19:53:49

Re: larch-7 testing

#166 2010-10-01 08:28:42

Re: larch-7 testing

#167 2010-10-02 15:41:06

Re: larch-7 testing

#168 2010-10-04 11:14:46

Re: larch-7 testing

Board footer