[Dev] Forking devtools

Luke T. Shumaker lukeshu at sbcglobal.net
Wed Nov 14 18:13:30 GMT 2012


I mentioned on IRC a while ago that I wanted to fork devtools, but
never explained why.

 1. To help keep the "libretools suite" small.
    devtools:
        42    Total programs installed
    ------------------------------------------------------------------
        30    Programs that are non applicable to Parabola because
              they make assumptions about the architectures and
              repositories supported (we have replacements for them).
	      (note: includes `archbuild`)
         6    Programs that are specific to ABS (won't work with
              ABSLibre or PBS)
    ------------------------------------------------------------------
	 4    Programs that pass the above "smell test", but we don't
              currently use (checkpkg, finddeps, find-libdeps, lddd)
	 2    Programs that we actually take advantage of
              (makechrootpkg, mkarchroot)
    I remember being a newb.  Having all of those can be confusing,
    when you don't know what to use.
 2. To prevent breakage.
    Libretools is pretty tightly coupled with devtools, and has broken
    with devtools updates.  An update to devtools usually requires us
    to change code anyway.
 2. To fix bugs that the Arch devs don't care about.
    `makechrootpkg` can't inherit a chroot lock... because it doesn't
    fit into the archdevs' workflow. This would be useful for
    `libremakepkg`.
 3. To reduce code duplication.
    `librechroot` currently contains code from `archbuild`.  If I
    could simply patch archbuild to be acceptable to Parabola, that
    would be simpler.
 4. To add features.
    I would like to add the ability to prevent a chroot from accessing
    the network.  It would be a 4-line patch to add a flag to do this.

Any objections?

Happy hacking,
~ Luke Shumaker



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