[Aptitude-devel] Bug#403289: add shorcut to compile a software

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: close -1

2016-03-30 12:33 Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo:
>Control: tags -1 + wontfix
>
>
>Hi Ludovic,
>
>2006-12-15 23:04 Ludovic Gasc:
>>Package: aptitude
>>Version: 0.4.4-1
>>
>>With apt-build, it's possible to recompile easily a deb.
>>
>>It would be greatful if it's possible with a keyboard shortcut to
>>select a software to recompile.
>>
>>Thanks for your response.
>
>
>2011-08-30 08:50 Daniel Hartwig:
>>severity 403289 wishlist
>>block 403289 by 403372 468897
>>quit
>>
>>Compiling source packages requires fetching both the source [1] and
>>any build-dep [2].
>>
>>
>>[1]  403372 -- To include option for download the source archives
>>[2]  468897 -- implement build-dep and source actions
>
>
>(The following is mostly a consideration of the difficulty of the
>problem, not a reply to the original report per se).
>
>
>The implementation of this feature is not trivial, and there are many
>considerations to make.
>
>Firstly, fetching source and installing build-dependencies is not a
>solved problem in aptitude, as the reply above said; so these mechanisms
>would have to be implemented first.
>
>But what it's more important, aptitude would have to make several
>non-trivial decisions or implement quite a few things with the requested
>feature, with such as a high-level thing as compiling by pressing a key.
>
>For example, one has to download and install all build-dependencies,
>which can mean a huge amount of data to download (e.g. installing tetex
>to create the documentation), so a warning has to be issued in this case
>(perhaps the user thinks that compiling a small package is a small
>matter, but the process can eat up a lot of bandwith and surprise/annoy
>the user).
>
>Another matter is where to download the source.  There's a well
>established place for downloading packages to be installed
>(/var/cache/apt/archives), but not so for such things as a package to be
>compiled.
>
>/usr/local/src?  Maybe, but /usr/ can be mounted as read-only.
>
>/tmp/ or /var/tmp?  /var/cache/aptitude-build?  Perhaps, but compiling
>big packages like the web browsers can use a huge amount of space and
>could fill /tmp or the root partition with pretty disastrous
>consequences, so the program would have to get some kind of confirmation
>from the user of where to download this.  A config variable could be
>used for that, but at least for the first time, the user would have to
>acknowledge it.  apt-build doesn't suffer from this because it does that
>in the current directory, I think.
>
>There are other non-trivial questions to be solved like what to do when
>aptitude is root, because running such things as root is perhaps not the
>wisest thing to do; or what to do if the user is in the middle of a
>session of installing/removing packages (installing build-deps could
>ruin, or conflict, with the current actions).
>
>apt-build doesn't have to deal with the problem of being in the middle
>of a session, or being run interactively in ncurses.  Doing this with
>the command line of aptitude could have similar advantages of
>simplifying the process a lot, but then again we already have apt-build
>for that.
>
>The last thing to consider that I will delve into is... why do all of
>this?  In the original request, this is to "recompile" software.  If
>it's software available in Debian (so build-deps can be installed and
>the package source downloaded), specially with the drive towards
>reproducible builds, the result should be an identical binary package,
>so I am not sure if this is the goal.
>
>If the goal is to (re)compile a package with some modifications, then
>the process cannot be automated, and a shell has to be spawned to be
>able to apply patches, or changing commands in debian/rules,
>enabling/disabling features (e.g. support for wayland, or codecs) or
>issuing different compilation flags.  This is again another thing that
>would be better served by something more like apt-build (or apt source +
>HACK + debuild; or git-buildpackage; or any of the other tools) and not
>doing it interactively from the curses interface of aptitude.
>
>
>... so these are some of the problems that come to mind as decisions to
>make to implement this feature.  A simple keypress triggering actions
>like recompiling a package is not straightforward to implement at all.
>
>Given that this has been requested a decade ago and there's no drive to
>implement this any time soon, I am marking it as +wontfix for the time
>being.

Since this is not going to be implemented for the reasons above, I am
going to close the bug now.

Apparently Daniel Burrows implemented fetching build-depends a few years
ago (#468897), but didn't see much point in implementing "source"
command, and if that command is not implemented, probably he wouldn't
consider the whole compilation of software from aptitude a good idea
either (and he didn't reply to this bug report, so...).


Cheers.
-- 
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>