Re: How to select which packages to download

Hi,

On 12.03.2008, at 13:04, Joe wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I read the About page, the FAQ and the handbook through chapter 4,  
> and was under the impression that I would be able to choose which  
> packages got downloaded, built, etc.  I then checked out the 7.0  
> branch and did ./scripts/Config.  I chose Generic, Minimalistic and  
> was therefore expecting some screen or other mechanism to select  
> which packages I wanted.

By selecting generic + the minimal package selection template you  
already
specified the packages you want. For generic / minimal that are just a  
few,
150 or so.

I think -list lists all package, -list-missing should give you a real  
overview.
You could also just run Build-Target, it would download them as-needed.

You can select packages in the expert option (custom package selection)
as targets usually define what to build, or you could start your  
custom target.

> I then tried ./scripts/Download -list and it reported it  
> (presumably) was going to download 3279 tarballs.  Since I don't  
> want to wait for hours and use up GBs of disk space for packages  
> that I'll never build, I was reluctant to do a ./script/Download - 
> required without first knowing what packages will be downloaded  
> (hopefully not all).  However, when I tried, it started downloading  
> packages that I don't need (or want) such as dietlibc and embutils.

By default T2 uses an optimized initrd and for this uses dietlibc and  
embutils. But
as they are tiny they should be just a tiny percentage of other must- 
have packages,
such as gcc.

-list-missing should give you the same list as -required would download.

Note, that recent T2 versions automatically download missing packages
during Build-Target and Emerge-Pkg and thus you only need to manually
run Download for dial-up setups or if you want to make sure you got all
sources before building.

> In addition, when I read that T2 "package configurations usually  
> point to the latest packages", I thought that it would still allow  
> one to select which package versions one could build with (since  
> many times, the latest is not the greatest--particularly in  
> combination with other dependent packages).
>
> Is there a way to only select only certain packages and particular  
> versions of packages?


We tried the "other versions" route years ago, but it quickly becomes a
version hell where most combinations rarely build.

For stable, known to work versions, we have the T2 stable trees
(6.0, 7.0, ...).

Trunk is to ready the next generation, which after some upstream
version releases and required adaption becomes 8.0 (sometime
this year).

Yours,

--
  René Rebe - ExactCODE GmbH - Europe, Germany, Berlin
  http://exactcode.de | http://t2-project.org | http://rene.rebe.name

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