I really don't see the point to this, as much as I like the idea of the Ports system... anything that's a GNU project that matters at all is already going to be prepackaged by the distro, so this is totally redundant and much better handled by your distro native package manager
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GNU SRC Updated: BSD Ports-Like System In The GNU World
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Originally posted by Luke_Wolf View PostI really don't see the point to this, as much as I like the idea of the Ports system... anything that's a GNU project that matters at all is already going to be prepackaged by the distro, so this is totally redundant and much better handled by your distro native package manager
There are a few different reasons people use GSRC. A big one is that not everyone has administrative access on every machine that they use. Furthermore, those shared machines that they use are often running distros like CentOS which have ancient versions of programs installed. GSRC makes it easy to locally install the most recent versions of GNU programs to your home directory. For example, I don't use it on my home computer because I can just install things system-wide via the AUR, but I do use it on the cluster I use at work so I'm not stuck using a five-year-old version of Emacs or a four-year-old version of GCC. Sure, it's straight-forward to manually download a tarball and install it locally, but GSRC automates everything and also implements a nice Stow-like symlinking system. Other people who don't use distros but rather maintain their own system from scratch also use GSRC to simplify installing GNU software.
Also, I would like to clarify that GSRC is not, nor was it ever meant to be, a full distro. Thus, its scope will never expand beyond GNU software. Its purpose is just for automating the installation of GNU software. Those interested in a full package-manager/distro should look at Guix or even GARStow, on which GSRC was based. Though, I do know of one distro that is working on using GSRC as a base for its future package management system (that will exist entirely independently of GSRC in the long run).
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Originally posted by Luke_Wolf View PostI really don't see the point to this, as much as I like the idea of the Ports system... anything that's a GNU project that matters at all is already going to be prepackaged by the distro, so this is totally redundant and much better handled by your distro native package manager
A more realistic goal is to be kind of like CPAN/CRAN/emacs packages/whatever - a niche ecosystem with its own package handling tools that are common across all distros (and several OSes) without integrating or interfering much with the surrounding system. The problem with that idea is, as you say, that most interesting GNU projects are already handled in every half-sensible package manager out there, so you'd only need it for the weirder and smaller ones. Of course, "a package manager for the GNU projects that are so weird your distro hasn't bothered to package them" isn't the greatest slogan.
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This project looks cool. I really like ports systems since I like the idea of fetching the software from the authors website rather than a central repository.
Using pkgsrc on RHEL was quite broken so hopefully this one will be more tailored towards Linux.
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Not really, the FreeBSD ports are tied to FreeBSD. So they needed to be "ported" or "reinvented" to Linux. On the other hand:
Currently users of the following systems successfully run Gentoo Prefix: Mac OS X on PPC and x86, Linux on x86, x86_64 and ia64, Solaris 10 on Sparc, Sparc/64, x86 and x86_64, FreeBSD on x86, AIX on PPC, Interix on x86, Windows on x86 (with the help of Interix), HP-UX on PARISC and ia64.
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Originally posted by jakobcreutzfeldt View PostHi, GSRC maintainer here.
There are a few different reasons people use GSRC. A big one is that not everyone has administrative access on every machine that they use. Furthermore, those shared machines that they use are often running distros like CentOS which have ancient versions of programs installed. GSRC makes it easy to locally install the most recent versions of GNU programs to your home directory. For example, I don't use it on my home computer because I can just install things system-wide via the AUR, but I do use it on the cluster I use at work so I'm not stuck using a five-year-old version of Emacs or a four-year-old version of GCC. Sure, it's straight-forward to manually download a tarball and install it locally, but GSRC automates everything and also implements a nice Stow-like symlinking system. Other people who don't use distros but rather maintain their own system from scratch also use GSRC to simplify installing GNU software.
Also, I would like to clarify that GSRC is not, nor was it ever meant to be, a full distro. Thus, its scope will never expand beyond GNU software. Its purpose is just for automating the installation of GNU software. Those interested in a full package-manager/distro should look at Guix or even GARStow, on which GSRC was based. Though, I do know of one distro that is working on using GSRC as a base for its future package management system (that will exist entirely independently of GSRC in the long run).
If you can outdo pkgsrc in numbers, more power to you.
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