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Build yourself a Linux

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Re: Build yourself a Linux

#41

Post by tanderson92 »

djsumdog wrote: post #39
tanderson92 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exherbo and Gentoo both solve this problem with something called "slots". Namely, you can install various slots of a package, you can depend on a slot, etc. In Exherbo you can tell optionally one package to runtime-depend on the slot of another package that you built it with.

I love slots. The Gentoo eselect system is way ahead of etc-alternatives or some of the other package select tools I've seen. Slotted binaries are easier though; slotted libraries can get complicated and get into some crazy dependency hell.

One of the nice things about Exherbos take on slots is that you won't get breakage with library upgrades because you won't be able to uninstall the old version until all packages declared to build with that ABI (or more specifically that slot was installed and built against) are rebuilt against the new library.

ABI breakages are far less painful than on gentoo.

Re: Build yourself a Linux

#42

Post by cmrx64 »

btgeekboy wrote: post #4
lanna wrote: post #3

If you are interested in building your own Linux, the LFS project has a lot of detailed information: http://linuxfromscratch.org

I see this project as the next logical step beyond LFS. LFS will help you get one up and running from start to finish, but once you do that, you might want to try it a bit more free-form. That's where this project seems to fit in.

Certainly you mean the other way around? This project gets you busybox and a kernel, which barely qualifies as "up and running from start to finish", whereas following this doesn't even get you a compiler in the target system.

Re: Build yourself a Linux

#43

Post by sq_ »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #37
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you for sticking with it. I've started in that direction a few times, but it really is amazing just how necessary all those hacky distro-maintained build scripts and patches are. It's tempting to think that they're just tweaking things to fit their conventions and handling edge cases, but they're often just getting it to not explode by default.

I've made several compromises so far. I've been making a note of them with the expectation (or hope) that I'll get to them, or a bright eyed new contributor might (I have some of those :D).

Do you have a Github repo or something similar for the distro? I'd love to see it if you do.

Re: Build yourself a Linux

#44

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

djsumdog wrote: post #8
digi_owl wrote: post #6

Both this and LFS reminds me that Linux makes sense until you get the DEs involved. At that point shit just sprawls all over the place as there are no longer any notion of layers.

Back in 2002 I ran LFS for a semester and a half. Then I got tired of saving all my ./configure flags and switch to Redhat and gained a respect for package management. :-P Eventually I started using Gentoo. Still, I'm really glad I built and ran an LFS for nearly a year. It helped me build a really in-dept knowledge of Linux that's helped me as I later moved into embedded development. Today I still use Gentoo (which…

I ran LFS too, probably around the same time, ran it until I moved to Debian of all things, probably for a few years even.

I remember at the time writing a series of very intricate build scripts to download and update the kernel on my desktop with every single release, specifically with the ac-sources patches that Alan Cox was maintaining at the time. Probably one of the first non-trivial programming projects I did.

Re: Build yourself a Linux

#46

Post by willtim »

digi_owl wrote: post #6

Both this and LFS reminds me that Linux makes sense until you get the DEs involved. At that point shit just sprawls all over the place as there are no longer any notion of layers.

I'm running i3, polybar, connman and rofi as my Linux desktop environment and its very productive, configurable, lightweight and reliable. My only worry is that one day I'll be forced to move to something akin to what you describe. I blame object-oriented programmers.

Re: Build yourself a Linux

#48

Post by exDM69 »

fizixer wrote: post #25

Have you even looked at the LFS project[1]? And what does your guide provide that LFS doesn't? [1] http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

This uses BusyBox instead of GNU userland tools. You can complete this in an afternoon, but you can't get LFS done in that time.

Re: Build yourself a Linux

#50

Post by duncan_bayne »

vbezhenar wrote: post #14
djsumdog wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in 2002 I ran LFS for a semester and a half. Then I got tired of saving all my ./configure flags and switch to Redhat and gained a respect for package management. :-P Eventually I started using Gentoo. Still, I'm really glad I built and ran an LFS for nearly a year. It helped me build a really in-dept knowledge of Linux that's helped me as I later moved into embedded development. Today I still use Gentoo (which…

I did exactly the same in 2005. I even wrote my own init scripts, so I really understood a lot what's going on at startup time. Linux was quite simple at that time. I could write my own init, if I wanted. Unfortunately now this knowledge is obsolete. Systemd is a complex beast which uses a lot of arcane techniques, I'm hardly understanding it. chroot was a really simple concept, but nowadays people use containers, an…

Maybe you should give FreeBSD a go. I've migrated to it from GNU/Linux for my everyday dev laptop, and haven't looked back. It's a lot like Linux used to be.
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