Gubuntu (Portage in Ubuntu) :)

[Vincenzo Di Massa]

Alle 17:48, giovedì 24 marzo 2005, John Ruschmeyer ha scritto:
> On Thu, 2005-03-24 at 08:08 -0800, Pat Martin wrote:
> > I don't know how many people here are familiar with FreeBSD, but
> > wouldn't it be nice to have something like what FreeBSD does with
> > reference to ports. I know Gentoo is trying to copy that but they don't
> > quite get the idea. See with FreeBSD you can install the package or
> > install it from ports (compiling). Also when you have installed from
> > ports if you want to remove the software you can use the package manger
> > because it installs it as a package! I have thought it would make more
> > sense to have a package system like most linux systems have but then
> > have a support of a ports like system that compiles things (so you can
> > customize the package) but still installs the software as a package.
>
> As a sometimes NetBSD user who has also run FreeBSD at various times, I
> will admit that I like the idea of being able to build/customize
> packages, but still have them integrated into the package manager. That
> said, though, I don't think that means we need to bring Portage into
> Ubuntu.
>
> It seems to me that much of the desired functionality is already there
> between 'apt-get -b' and 'apt-build'. The latter needs to be installed
> as it is not part of a default install, but seems to do much of what one
> would want.
>
> My other personal favorite is 'checkinstall' for those pieces of
> software which are only available in source form as a .tar.gz. For those
> who have never used checkinstall, you configure and build the
> application normally; instead of running 'make install', though, you run
> 'checkinstall' which builds a .deb from the installation process and
> installs that using dpkg. The  resulting package can then be manipulated
> with the regular debian package tools.

A very nice debian packager helper program is yada. Using it you just:
1) download source and unpack it
2) launch a bootstrap command to setup the package's debian dir
3) edit one single file (mostly you add your name, email... and ./configure 
options)
4) build the actual package

I'm a new yada user, but I'm really impressed!

Vincenzo.