[ic] Gentoo ebuild

[Grant]

> > > > > > I'd like to get an Interchange ebuild into Gentoo's Portage.  Does
> > > > > > anyone know if there has been any work done on building one thus far?
> > > > > >
> > > > > If you want to do that then go right ahead.  I'm sure that nobody will
> > > > > object.  I think that someone had a go at that a few years ago, but
> > > > > it was dropped from Portage due to a lack of maintenance.
> > > > >
> > > > > My Gentoo servers have multiple Interchange instances running, so I
> > > > > won't be using a packaged release; I install using either a released
> > > > > tar archive, or a tar archive of the latest development CVS version.
> > > > > Most of my live installations are running 5.5.0 (CVS).
> > > > >
> > > > Does the latest IC still use makemaker?
> > > >
> > > > http://schwern.org/~schwern/talks/MakeMaker_Is_DOOMED/slides/slide023.html
> > > >
> > > It does still use ExUtils::MakeMaker in the Makefile.PL, yes.  That won't
> > > affect your Gentoo Portage ebuild in any way.
> >
> > I contacted the author of one of the previous ebuild attempts (5.2) to
> > find out why it was so difficult and I got this:
> >
> > It's got a weird interactive build system that is documented poorly
> > and incorrectly.  You may want to ask the perl folks for advice as it
> > uses makemaker.
> >
> > Has the build system changed at all since 5.2?
> >
> It has not changed in years.  Lots of ebuilds work around weird
> interactive build systems.  That shouldn't present too much of a
> problem.  Documentation is something that is easily improved upon.
> 
> I wouldn't bother creating an ebuild out of the Standard demo, as
> it's not something you'd want Portage to touch every time an update
> is released.  I'd make an ebuild out of the core with single-instance
> LSB installation and an auto-created "interchange" user and group.
> I'd just create a pkg_postinst() section with an ewarn to tell the
> user to run makecat.

Has the user changed from interch to interchange?

I'm undecided on how to handle the installation of standard catalogs, but you make a good point.  You don't want Portage playing with your catalog files once you're using them.  A message about using makecat may be the way to go.

>     s/I'd/I'd advise that you/g  :-)
> 
> The old 5.2 ebuild had dependencies on a whole load of Perl modules,
> which I considered to be a bad move;  Create a separate ebuild
> (dev-perl/BundleInterchange, or whatever) and depend upon that instead.
> That way, people could make use of the Perl bundle, even if they wanted
> to use the tar archive for Interchange itself.  You could set up some
> sort of "kitchensink" USE flag too, while you're at it.

I'm not sure I agree with you here.  I think most Gentoo users would rather see each Perl module pulled in separately.  For example, if someone already has all the necessary Perl modules installed, there is no need to pull in BundleInterchange.  I do think that BundleInterchange deserves its own ebuild in Portage though.

> I'll look forward to seeing your efforts on a Gentoo Portage mirror near
> me soon.  Good luck.

Me too, but I'm sure it will be a relatively slow process.

- Grant