Re: frontend needed to make Gentoo/embedded a viability

On 8/12/06, Mike Frysinger <vapier-aBrp7R+bbdUdnm+yROfE0A@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
wrote:
> so i was tooling along the road thinking about what it would take for people
> to sit down and use Gentoo/embedded for the target ... currently we have misc
> ways of doing this by hand (install mask/etc...), but it tends to be error
> prone and it requires the end user to know more than they should about the
> portage environment
>
> what would help here is a frontend ... something like uClinux or Open Embedded
> where a menu system allows the user to select the packages to install into
> the target image and when they're done, they simply type 'make' ... wait a
> bit and they're left with images that they can take and flash onto the target
> board
>
> so really, a friendly frontend for the user to select the characteristics of
> the system, and then a backend to take that config and use emerge to build
> everything and generate an image ... would make it easy to create stock board
> descriptions too ...
>
> what do you guys think ?  stupid idea ?  good idea waiting for a champion ?
> -mike

I think thats an excellent idea. The current approach seems to use
ROOT= in order to install packages.  I really like the idea of a
gentoo version of uclibc and such, almost like the linux kernel.

I'm currently planning to use embedded gentoo on an embedded project
(x86 board though), and a menu-driven selection of optional packages
would greatly simplify the process of generating new images.

Just my non-developer two cents.

~Kevin
--
Open Source, Open Mind