On Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:46:31 +1100 Brendan Simon <Brendan@BrendanSimon.com> wrote: > > Grip doesn't need to be cross-compiled, it should support native > > building ON an Emdebian Grip machine. Yes, it probably will be slow > > but cross-building is still not implemented in more than 1% of > > Debian packages. > > > > Grip needs to have almost a full package set - I'd guess at 10,000 > > or maybe 15,000 packages of the 20,000 in Debian. Crush currently > > has 248. > > Needs to ??? Why??? Surely we only need to Grip the packages that > people are likely to use. Who decides what people are likely to use? The only reason Crush is so small is because I'm the only one building packages for Crush right now. ;-) 1. Grip should be "fully-trimmed" - this means that the repository created by Grip should not have any dangling dependencies (something that is acceptable in Crush but not in Debian). This means that the 248 packages in Crush could instantly become over a thousand to include all those -dev and -doc dependencies. Build dependencies also need to be considered. Trimming is necessary so that machines running Grip can build their own packages and not lose functionality relative to Debian. 2. Grip should cover all architectures supported by Debian - we've seen already that people want to run Grip on amd64, something nobody would expect for Crush. 3. Grip implicitly supports individual repositories - so whilst Grip can support almost all packages, individual repositories, individual maintainers, can choose which package sets (and architectures) they want to provide. > Surely we wouldn't grip things like qcad, > etc. Just grip the basic packages (same as crush) to start with, then > people can request others to be gripped as needed. This could be > automated via a web page to specify packages to be gripped and put in > the grip repository. Yes, Grip will begin with the package set available to Crush. However, Grip is entirely automated and it would be relatively trivial to escalate that set to the full package set. Take a look at the dpkg-cross repository run by Simon. There is almost no cost in allowing any package to be gripped because very few would need any changes to accommodate Grip. > OK, got it, but if I need to develop my own packages or modify an > existing package, then it must be done on the same architecture as the > grip device or on the grip device itself. This is not viable or > productive in some cases (eg. commercial development). True, but cross-building Debian is still difficult. Most packages will not cross-build without modification in Debian and until Lenny is released, that isn't going to change. Besides, building on the machine isn't that bad if you can just leave it to build. gcc and glibc are probably not the best choices. :-) > > Cross-building is not part of Grip. Cross-building is initially > > related only to Emdebian Crush using functionality changes for > > dependency reduction. Cross-building may be a bonus from work on > > Crush but Grip is essentially about repackaging prebuilt native > > binaries. Packages can be "gripped" during the build, prior to > > inclusion into a Grip repository or after downloading onto the > > device running Grip (if sufficient space exists). > > > I still think cross-compiling packages is a good goal for emdebian. Currently, cross-building necessitates functional changes in the packages even within the package set available for Crush. This isn't properly handled in the current packages, a package rename should be used. See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=480515#12 Cross-building Grip means retaining functionality which means more cross-building support bugs, more work and waiting until after Lenny. Cross-building is a primary goal for Emdebian, but so is a lack of functional changes relative to Debian and a range of options for smaller installation sizes. > Even Grip (cross compile my customizations and grip it, grip it good). Cross-building for Crush will ensure that all the changes that apply to Grip are also applied under the Crush cross-build. > Maybe I'm really talking about crush (or a variant), but with standard > packages like glibc and coreutils rather than uclic and busybox, > etc ??? Crush currently uses glibc and busybox. ;-) Grip will use glibc and coreutils. uClibc support needs to wait until uClibc returns to Debian - at that point, a variant of Crush will meet that goal. > Keep up the good work. Emdebian is going to rock to world - hopefully > sooner rather than later :) The more people join the work, the sooner it will happen. ;-) -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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