SEO

Hi,
Somebody asked me what the best way was to provide a piece of (proprietary)
software for Gentoo?

Is this via the ebuild package system? What is the easyest way to create an
ebuild like firefox-bin (it is a binary only we're talking about)?

The idea is that company X provides a medium (CD/ftp/usb/etc.) with this
package to a company Y that uses Gentoo. Thing is that this software may
NOT be distributed along the entire Internet, so it has to be something
local.

Is there any documentation about this? (just a link would be nice enough) Or
when there is no, what is the closest you can get me.

I found:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel...?part=2&chap=1
but as I read it this is mostly about the ebuilds with sources (which
offcourse we like most :P).

Thank you for your time in advance.

Grtz. Bert

On 2005-04-18, BertB <b.baesjou@N05P4M.student.utwente.nl> wrote:
> Hi,
> Somebody asked me what the best way was to provide a piece of (proprietary)
> software for Gentoo?
>
> Is this via the ebuild package system? What is the easyest way to create an
> ebuild like firefox-bin (it is a binary only we're talking about)?
>


Maybe look at something like the dev-db/oracle* ebuilds.

BertB <b.baesjou@N05P4M.student.utwente.nl> schrieb:
> Hi,
> Somebody asked me what the best way was to provide a piece of (proprietary)
> software for Gentoo?
>
> Is this via the ebuild package system? What is the easyest way to create an
> ebuild like firefox-bin (it is a binary only we're talking about)?
>

Look for "portage_overlay", you can set this variable in /etc/make.conf
to specify a second (and even third) directory where ebuilds are stored.

# grep OVERLAY /etc/make.conf
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage /usr/local/gentoo-de"

ls /usr/local/portage
app-backup dev-db kde-apps net-dns profiles
app-crypt dev-lang kde-base net-ftp sci-mathematics
<snip />
app-shells games-misc net-analyzer net-wireless x11-wm
app-text gnome-extra net-dialup net-www
(I have a rather big one that got accumulated over the time)

You have to mimick the usual structure of
category/package/package-version.ebuild

HTH,

--
Christian Prior

Thanks to the help of some people here I came a bit further, but now I'm
kind of "stuck" on what license to use. /usr/portage/licenses/ lists a lot
of licenses, but the idea is that the binary I want to ship is just
proprietary software. What is the best license to use without having to add
a license myself to this list?
Tnx in advance.
grtz. Bert

BertB wrote:

> Thanks to the help of some people here I came a bit further, but now I'm
> kind of "stuck" on what license to use. /usr/portage/licenses/ lists a lot
> of licenses, but the idea is that the binary I want to ship is just
> proprietary software. What is the best license to use without having to add
> a license myself to this list?

I'm not a Gentoo developer, but here's my opinion:

As this binary and ebuild will not be distributed by Gentoo, you can put
anything reasonable in the LICENSE string, like

LICENSE="/usr/share/doc/your_binary-x.y/LICENSE.txt"

Ship the LICENSE.txt (or whatever its name is) together with the ebuild
in a tar ball, extract the LICENSE.txt to the files directory, then in
the ebuild use dodoc to put it in the doc directory.

Regards...
Michael

> As this binary and ebuild will not be distributed by Gentoo, you can put
> anything reasonable in the LICENSE string, like
>
> LICENSE="/usr/share/doc/your_binary-x.y/LICENSE.txt"
>
> Ship the LICENSE.txt (or whatever its name is) together with the ebuild
> in a tar ball, extract the LICENSE.txt to the files directory, then in
> the ebuild use dodoc opinion in the doc directory.
>
> Regards...
> Michael
I want to thank Michael for is input but:

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel...?part=2&chap=1
states: LICENSE MUST This variable specifies what license the program
is covered under, i.e. GPL-2, BSD, etc... This field must be set to a valid
license (which is any license found in /usr/portage/license/). If the
license does not already exist there, it must be added before the ebuild
can be added to the portage tree. If the license does not allow
redistribution, make sure you place RESTRICT="nomirror" in the ebuild.

BTW maintainers: typo overhere: /usr/portage/license should
be /usr/portage/licenses (the last S).

This would mean that I need a prescript or some manual actions to first put
my license in here, and after this I can run my emerge. Ow yeah, I forgot,
I also have to set /etc/portage/package.mask to be able to emerge. So I
have to probably run a script which does these things, after which I can
let the customer run emerge.....

If I may have an opinion, I don't think gentoo is very nice to 3rd party
software developers who want to provide ebuilds to their customers. I know
that for sys admins these tasks are not massive, but like most people out
there in the world, I just want to use the PC and not be constantly
configuring it. "One window shopping" should do all the work in my opinion,
one click/script or wathever should do the trick.
And offcourse I know that other systems are sometimes even more a bitch,
like RPM based installs which are just one big mess which has noting to do
with installing you package but trying to push the shit somewhere on the
system :P without bothering you with some kind of error.

Tnx. for the input.
Bert

BertB wrote:

> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel...?part=2&chap=1
> states: LICENSE MUST This variable specifies what license the program
> is covered under, i.e. GPL-2, BSD, etc... This field must be set to a valid
> license (which is any license found in /usr/portage/license/). If the
> license does not already exist there, it must be added before the ebuild
> can be added to the portage tree. If the license does not allow
> redistribution, make sure you place RESTRICT="nomirror" in the ebuild.

You are right, this "MUST" is a bit misleading, but I think that Ebuild
Howto is mostly for ebuilds that are supposed to be redistributed by
Gentoo in its portage tree.

The Ebuild Howto is part of the Gentoo Developer Handbook
<http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml>, i.e. it is
a guide for the Gentoo developers in the first place.

> This would mean that I need a prescript or some manual actions to first put
> my license in here, and after this I can run my emerge.

No, I don't think so: after the next "emerge sync" your license will be
removed from /usr/portage/licenses, because it is not in the official
Gentoo tree.

Your ebuild and all parts of it should go somewhere under
/usr/local/portage or wherever the user's PORTDIR_OVERLAY points to.

> Ow yeah, I forgot, I also have to set /etc/portage/package.mask to be
> able to emerge.

No, definitely not. Set KEYWORDS="x86" and/or whatever arch for which
you are confident your binary will run on. This is your private,
"personal" ebuild, so you don't have to be holier than the pope. But
please don't write to /etc/portage/package.* or any other user
controlled files.

For official Gentoo ebuilds of course it is mandatory to have
KEYWORDS="~x86" first, so adventurous people test the ebuild before it
goes stable.

> So I have to probably run a script which does these things, after
> which I can let the customer run emerge.....

I don't know... Gentoo users normally are used to using an editor and a
shell, so if you make a nice text file listing the necessary steps, they
will be happy. And if your ebuild pulls in all the necessary libraries,
they will be even more happy.

> If I may have an opinion, I don't think gentoo is very nice to 3rd party
> software developers who want to provide ebuilds to their customers.

Of course you may have an opinion, but in my eyes Gentoo's portage is
very good, even for proprietary ebuilds. Some of these are already in
the official portage tree (with RESTRICT="fetch"). And yes, it's nice to
have Flash, Java, Adobe Reader etc. controlled by the package
management.

> I know that for sys admins these tasks are not massive, but like most
> people out there in the world, I just want to use the PC and not be
> constantly configuring it. "One window shopping" should do all the
> work in my opinion, one click/script or wathever should do the trick.

Probably Gentoo won't be your favourite distro then, but many people
like Gentoo and especially portage.

> And offcourse I know that other systems are sometimes even more a bitch,
> like RPM based installs which are just one big mess which has noting to do
> with installing you package but trying to push the shit somewhere on the
> system :P without bothering you with some kind of error.

Yes, right.

Regards...
Michael

<cut useful info>

</cut useful info>
>> I know that for sys admins these tasks are not massive, but like most
>> people out there in the world, I just want to use the PC and not be
>> constantly configuring it. "One window shopping" should do all the
>> work in my opinion, one click/script or wathever should do the trick.
>
> Probably Gentoo won't be your favourite distro then, but many people
> like Gentoo and especially portage.

In the contrary, all the PC's I own run on Gentoo, when I only need to (re-)
install a distro let's say once every few years (I know, it is me that most
of the times fucks up the system), I am gladly willing to invest a day to
configure such a system. After this, it should "just work". I even find it
quite simple to install Gentoo (well documented etc.).
In my search for installation procedures I "found" autopackage
(http://autopackage.org/) which is a great to to install the kind of
software we are talking about here. Therefore I would advise my client to
use this autopackage for distributing his software.

>
>> And offcourse I know that other systems are sometimes even more a bitch,
>> like RPM based installs which are just one big mess which has noting to
>> do with installing you package but trying to push the shit somewhere on
>> the system :P without bothering you with some kind of error.
>
> Yes, right.
>
> Regards...
> Michael

Thank you for your input,
Bert