[ILUG] Compiling; Gentoo

[Lance Dryden]

Scríobh duine inteacht:

> I've always wondered, if you are a *really* dedicated Gentoo user,
> how do you bootstrap? So obviously even Gentoo users install
> precompiled packages sometimes  :-)  It's a bit like where did the
> 1st Gentoo Penguin come from? Egg or Penguin?

If you're a sane Gentoo user, you use the install CD to give you enough
of a live-CD environment that doesn't scribble on your disks.  You then
partition, lay down filesystems, including the prospective '/', then
untar a stage3 onto it.  Once you're here you can probably "chroot
${WHEREVER_I_MOUNTED_MY_TARGET_SYSTEMROOT} /bin/bash" and get a shell
prompt, at which you're probably obligated to pull down a recent portage
tere and use this to install at least a bootloader and a kernel, at
which point you can boot into this Gentoo system.

If you're a psychotic Gentoo user, you start with an environment of your
choice, build a bunch of stuff (such as glibc, linux headers, binutils,
gcc, other sundries, etc.) from source, with the object or installdir
targeted elsewhere, then lay those down.  If it's the same arch as the
host, you can then chroot in as above.  If not, you need to boot into
this and pray to ${DEITY} you didn't forget one of 250+ things you could
have messed up.[1]

In the past, this was effectively what a Gentoo stage1 was, but use of
stage1 tarballs is considered psychotic for normal users.  Only people
who are cross-building for an unsupported architecture would be
obligated to do this.

> I've dabbled in Compiler Writing, and compiling your compiler written
> in the language it compiles  (which implements a new language you
> just invented) using your  new language is common and makes the
> Gentoo folks seem quite sane.
> 
> Does anyone actually *like* compiling or is it a just a necessary
> evil ?

Yes.  Those who write new code rarely start with an autoconf-compliant
codebase.  They usually get to a certain step, then if their project
lives and requires porting they bolt on autoconf or CMake or imake
(bwahahahah).

-- Lance

[1] For more information on how this is done, check out
<http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/>.  If you value your sanity, you will
not attempt this without good reason.

P.S. An ex-Gentoo user I know of tried to get a working desktop complete
with KDE-base onto a P300 dual.  336 compile hours later, he stopped the
compiles and installed something else.