Re: Testing out jhbuild

[Craig Keogh <cskeogh adam com au>]

On Fri, 2011-07-29 at 15:12 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:

Thank you for your feedback on JHBuild. I want JHBuild to just work. I
want it to be easy to create a GNOME sandbox.

> * I think we need to work on our setup process; if you get jhbuild
>   installed, typing jhbuild produces:
> 
>    jhbuild: could not load config file, /home/otaylor/.jhbuildrc is
> missing
> 
>   With no help about how to create it.

The JHBuild manual [1], wiki [2] and README [3] (README refers reader to
the manual) provides help how to create .jhbuildrc.

> * The defaults for checkout and installation directory are:
> 
>    checkout - ~/checkout/gnome
>    install - /opt/gnome
> 
>   these seem rather random and incoherent to me. Is there a reason
>   to do the install into a system directory by default?

No reason I know of. Historic probably. I raised bug 655714 [4] to
address this.

> * I then ran jhbuild sysdeps. When you just run jhbuild sysdeps
>   and it displays a report, it really should make it clear that
>   by running 'jhbuild sysdeps --install' it can install these
>   system dependencies. It installed:

Agree. This is bug 655613 [5].

> * I still was missing quite a few packages needed for a successful
>   build. Things I needed to install were:
> 
>   libffi-devel (glib)
>   texinfo (libIDL)
>   libcurl-devel (liboauth)
>   openssl-devel (liboauth)
>   libacl-devel (gudev)
>   libudev-devel (gudev)
>   libicu-devel (webkit)
>   libXt-devel (webkit)
>   libgdbm-devel (avahi)
>   udisks-devel (gnome-disk-utility)
>   wireless-tools-devel (NetworkManager)
>   libuuid-devel (NetworkManager)
>   ppp-devel (NetworkManager)
>   libXtst-devel (mousetweaks)

sysdeps is only new to JHBuild and there isn't 100% coverage. Thank you
for raising bug 655542 [6].

> * #!$!@ update conflict in gdk-pixbuf

Work is in progress to fix that. See bug 652475 comment 4 & 5 [7].

> * http://live.gnome.org/Jhbuild
> 
>   Is far too detailed and text-y, and "you can do this or you can do
> that"

I wrote/copy&paste a lot of that page. How can I make it better? Do you
mean split the detail into child pages? Are you suggesting remove
detail? I thought detail is good.

>   And probably should not recommend bootstrap under any circumstances

I guess this is a hang-over from earlier days where autotools
incremented versions quickly and distros were slow to catch-up. I agree,
should not recommend bootstrap on a modern Linux distro. I'll fix it.
-- 
Craig Keogh <cskeogh adam com au>

[1] http://developer.gnome.org/jhbuild/unstable/
[2] http://live.gnome.org/Jhbuild
[3] http://git.gnome.org/browse/jhbuild/tree/README
[4] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=655714
[5] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=655613
[6] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=655542
[7] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=652475#c4