The Workbench 2016-08

  • Posted on: 19 August 2016
  • By: tomww

(very latest: I started programming a package+script to install a new build environment fully automated 20160819)

What is on my workbench these days?

I hope that the spec file updates for LibreOffice 5 arrive on my workbench soon.

The Version LibreOffice4 is really good, so don't hesitate to use it today.

About automatic builds

I've resumed automatic build and I'm using the chance to improve the logic in the script, so that failed spec files aren't built over and over again. From time to time I have to thin out the repos as too many packages with identical content are present (due to sometimes unnessesary rebuilds).
The tricky thing with autobuild is, "pkgtool" itself is not terribly smart in detecting if a package should be built again. Maybe I'll use the package-list output of "pkgtool --autodeps build-order" and then build the spec files from that list one by one. That way I can exclude failed packages from the next build by putting the bad onces on a "paused" list.

Other projects in planning/design

Creating a simple-to-use package (in a file-repo) so you can easily install the build environment yourself. I'll put up an article and write about the features I plan initially. Please comment once it is online!

On the first use, the init-script will ask you a few questions like accepting the compiles found on the system. I plan to have a initi-file, so you can bypass the manual steps in case you're running an automated build with always fresh installed OS images.

Webstack is still one of the very interesing ones. I plan to update the existing spec files of php, mysql, postgresql and see how I can bridge the gap OmniOS in terms of Webserver (Apache is only in extra repos for OmniOS). As many people want a choice like running apache or nginx or other webserver, please tell me your favourite so I get an idea on wich ones to prioritize.

Having current nodejs packages is on my personal wishlist. Which versions would you like to see first?

Under the hood a relocation of the GCC-runtime files and compiler is testet soon. In the early SFE-days the path /usr/gcc/ was clean, but nowadays, Solaris 11 and OpenIndiana Hipster use the same directories. This in some cases leads to file conflicts. The proposed new path will be /usr/gcc-sfe/ and symlinks from /usr/gcc/lib to /usr/gcc-sfe/lib will for a transitioning time help to maintain compatibility at runtime. I'll post an article soon with more details (written before on the pkgbuild developers mailing list).

Asking for feedback

If you feel dropping a note about what you think and like or dislike with "SFE", I would really appreciate to hear from you. So far I've seen around 300 downloads of libreOffice (all distro) and got a hand full feedback messages. Thank you for the feedback, you know who you are!
Feedback fuels maintainer's motivation you know!

Regards,
Thomas