Gentoo for Mac OS X Released

joeljkp writes "According to today's Gentoo Weekly News, Gentoo has released a new project: Gentoo MacOS (sic). This new distribution adds Portage, Gentoo's package manager, to Mac OS X, among other things."

Comments

Full Text (images already /.'ed)

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo News
-----------

"Apple, we have a problem" - Gentoo MacOS X Released

Figure 1.1: Derived from Apple's 'Redmond, we have a problem' campaign:
The Gentoo MacOS announcement
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/200 40719_macos_pr oblem.png

Almost exactly one year after the idea of porting Portage to MacOS X came
up - and the joint Metapkg initiative[1] between Fink, Darwinports and
Gentoo took off - a 20-head-strong developer team around Pieter van den
Abeele[2] (strategic lead) and Daniel Ostrow[3] (operational) is now ready
to release an extraordinary beast into the wild: Gentoo MacOS. They
deliver on a promise no other Linux distribution has been daring enough to
make yet: Portage on MacOS is now fully operational, seamlessly integrated
as a package manager in a non-Linux operating system. It initially serves
the main purpose of an SDK for inclusion of new packages, testing and
patching. Granted, KDE isn't ported yet, but make no mistake: Gentoo MacOS
is ready for consumption by Macintosh users who want, say, scientific DTP
via TeX, something they will now be able to simply emerge in OS X just
like they'd do in Gentoo Linux."Right now it's a tool to install lots of
commonly requested applications on OS X", explains Pieter van den Abeele.
"But in a few months, we'll have a port system that builds Darwin from
scratch, provides a standardised lookup and installation routine for
Dashboard widgets[4], enhancements and tools like the Desktop Manager[5]
and many, many more popular OS X applications." Downloading the Gentoo
MacOS Installer provides users with a patched portage, its tree, and the
Python modules. It sets environment variables and demands a bootstrapping
shell script to be run before the first emerge that detects the operating
system (Panther or Tiger), chooses the relevant profiles and injects every
application it finds already installed in MacOS X.

1. http://www.metapkg.org
2. pvdabeel gentoo.org
3. dostrow gentoo.org
4. http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard.html
5. http://wsmanager.sourceforge.net/

Figure 1.2: Taming the Tiger with a double-click: The Gentoo MacOS
Installer
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn /20040719_macos_in staller.png

Since Gentoo's own GCC ebuild for MacOS X isn't ready yet, compiling is
currently done using the Xcode development tools[6] which include GCC 3.3
provided by Apple. "People already on Tiger can experiment with GCC 3.5",
adds Pieter. Tiger, the new release of MacOS X, is due in 2005 with its
brandnew database filesystem Spotlight[7], modernised video services and
many other features. The Gentoo MacOS developers are busy polishing the
knobs (a Cocoa user interface is part of the plan), getting iSync[8]
integration to work (emerge an application on one machine, automatically
replicate onto all other Macs in a LAN), right down to making Catalyst
produce Darwin LiveCDs... "But first the cool stuff, then Darwin",
chuckles strategic lead Pieter. Even though his team is already larger
than the entire Gentoo Linux PPC developer group, they still train new
devs almost daily, and whoever wants to help with the project is very
welcome to get in touch. The public Wiki[9] holds installation
instructions and serves as a reporting tool for packages outside of
Portage that already compile without bombing out. The Gentoo MacOS
Installer can be downloaded from here[10].

6. http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/xcode.html
7. http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlighttech.ht ml
8. http://www.apple.com/isync/
9. http://gentoo-wiki.com/Gentoo_MacOS
10. http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/
Full size (1024x768) screenshots of the Gentoo MacOS installation
procedure:
* Installer starts[11]
* Detection of OS version and installed software[12]
* Still busy injecting detected

Re:Full Text (images already /.'ed)

[loosifer]

But Spotlight is just indexing the same metadata that is in HFS+ under Jaguar, plus data that it pulls out of the file, not out of the filesystem. There is significant improvement in the mechanism and the interface, but it is not a "database filesystem."

As far as I can tell, that is incorrect; Dominic (the authoer of BeFS) has added additional metadata capabilities to HFS+, so Spotlight is actually 1) indexing that metadata, and 2) using interpreters to pull and index data from various file formats. See those post, for instance. While I agree that this does not create a true database filesystem, I would say that it's close to what BeOS had, which is the closest anyone has come.

I must admit interest in MS's claim that they're going to create a true database filesystem; while it is obviously technically feasible, it's just as stupid now as it was years ago when Be decided to back off theirs. Thus, I expect MS to produce a solution that does what they said it would do while sucking so much that no one uses it. It will be interesting to watch.

As to the claim that Apple is just doing all front-end stuff while MS is actually doing technology, I call baloney on that one. Apple has been good recently at creating and then utilyzing really good technology (although it's usually protocols, not servers). All of the technology available via .Mac is available to everyone, even if the servers themselves aren't. I can (and did) create a WebDAV server to store and share my calendars, and I can mount this WebDAV server as a local filesystem. Rendezvous/Zeroconf is another good example of a tech that Apple has developed, championed, and then been a real leader on.

I agree that there are big differences, though: Spotlight is based on proven technology and will surely arrive in 2005, while WinFS is a huge gamble, will increase costs dramatically (both licensing and maintenance), and will also arrive no earlier than 2006, without actually being based on proven tech at all. If their history is anything to go by, it will be 2010 or so before WinFS is usable.

Re:Cool

[Wally Fenderson]

Still waiting for the commodore 64 version, myself.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

there already is a distribution for xbox that is based on gentoo.
its called http://gentoox.shallax.com/

-Jonathan

I see that it's a catchy headline, but ...

[burgburgburg]

how exactly is this a problem for Apple?

Re:Yea, and?

[hunterx11]

This one goes to 11.

In case you don't get it.

[torpor]

This means (sorta, as in 'soon') that a Mac-user will be able to rebuild their own OSX box, using the Gentoo scripts, and still be able to maintain compatability with all OSX apps.

In other words, a 'better build system: a public one' has been unleashed on a commercial operating system, so that - separate from the company itself - alternative builds of the OS can be done, publically.

Why is this good? Because with Gentoo you can take personal risks that Apple can't. Gentoo allows you to build a system "Just for You", whereas Apple have to compile/link things "For Everyone".

Expect to see highly-tuned Gentoo boxes running GentooMacOS in the future, smokin' 'Factory OS' setups. I'll be digging into this a bit further, next point release sort of thing, and if I get the same results out of applying Gentoo to my OSX machine as I have with my Linux boxes, I'm excited. I may man I can put off a hardware upgrade or two and just 'Take Things To The Next Level' on my aging Powerbook...

Oh, and in case you think Apple should be 'worried about' this, it seems to me that they already get the point. With all the OS releases they've been doing lately, and the upgrades/improvements in the one area 'open source' is lacking: usability, and it seems to me that they're positioned well to be 'competing with the Open Source Base' ... but thats just my personal opinion.

Re:Gentoo MacOS?

[Noksagt]

um, isn't that 'Gentoo MacOS' a tad misleading? It's like calling x86 Linux 'Linux Windows'
No--this isn't an OS (gentoo has run on the Mac hardware for sometime). Rather it is a native OS X port of portage and other gentoo utilities. It would be like calling cygwin "cygwin" (in other words Cygnus + GNU on windows).

Oh the, err for want of a better word, 'Humanity'!

[Thud457]

Dear God, No!

All idiotic zealtory of Gentoo with all the, well, mindless zealotry of Mac! A winning combination!

Re:Fink?

[Shinzaburo]

Gentoo MacOS brings the Gentoo Portage package management system to Mac OS X. Yes, it provides functionality similar to Fink and DarwinPorts, and all three solutions have agreed to cooperate in the future.

Portage seems to have several advantages over the other package management tools, including the following summary from the Portage manual:

Multiple versions and revisions of the same package in the tree, conditional dependency resolution and feature support, fine-grained package management, sandboxed safe installation, configuration file protection, profiles, and much more.

Re:emerge karmawhore

[Joseph Vigneau]

gentoo's strenth is its' ability to squeeze 0.0008 percent more processing power out of your 2.4ghz computer

Actually, that is not Gentoo's primary strength. Its strength is from the amount of flexibility that portage provides for package dependency. With binary-oriented distributions, you are forced to use the same configuration settings that were chosen by the package maintainer. Portage has the concept of "USES", which is basically a list of flags that the build uses to figure out what options to use during compilation. For example, many packages can be integrated with GNOME. I don't use GNOME. With other distributions, if the package was built with GNOME dependencies, I'd be forced to install GNOME. If the package was built without GNOME, some GNOME user wouldn't be able to take advantage of GNOME-specific features. With Portage, you can specify via the USES variable whether or not you want to have a dependancy on GNOME or not. As a side effect, you get the CPU-optimization "for free".

Re:emerge karmawhore

[bob670]

I'm going to agree with you on all points. I bought a Shuttle SK41G, GeForce4, Athlon XP 2000+ and 2x256 DDR a few weeks ago. From out of the box, assembly time and then OS install was about one hour 15 minutes with all hardware recognized correctly, all updates installed and a usable desktop, office suite, Internet tools, etc... A quick install of the nVidia driver updates and some extra software gooodness via urpmi and I was off and running in about 90 minutes.

Compared to a couple days to get the same results with Gentoo, which is an outstanding distro, but not the distro to break Linux onto the mainstream desktop. Any casual PC user who has built a gaming PC or even tinkered around with his Dell could get Mandrake up and usable in less than an hour, Gentoo however is another story. Of course Gentoo wasn't aimed at that market, but the parent poster can't possibly paint Gentoo as easy to install and not expect some rebuttals.

Re:Yea, and?

[Otter]

I could well just be missing something, but I've had a lot of problems with the selection granularity in fink -- e.g. trying to build x-chat without dragging in all of GNOME. USE flags would be a very nice alternative.

Re:Yes! Finally! Optimized MacOS!

[Antihero77]

Doesn't anyone know the right compiler flags? Does O4 work on a Mac?! AWESOME! I'm going to go recompile my Gentoo in celebration of this huge day.

See ya in 6 months.

Re:Yea, and?

[Massacrifice]

I recently moved bask from Gentoo-PPC to Mac OS X + Fink lately after my Linux HD crashed, so I'll tell you what I am missing the most about Gentoo.

First, there are a quite a bunch of advanced build options in Portage that are not available under Fink (see /etc/make.conf). USE variable, easy distcc, easy ccache, powerful package query... These are things that you can't go without once you've tried them.

Fink is nice, but its package tree is smaller and less up to date than Portage is. Besides, nobody will prevent you from having both.

Apart from Portage, Gentoo offers multiple system management facilities. I don't know if these will be ported, but things like rc-update (init script management) and java-config really help.

Finally, I think that what will set Gentoo-MacOS apart from Fink is the number of developper and community size. That is something that cannot be duplicated.

how's its hygiene?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the most awesomeliest things about Fink is that it installs everything in root /sw, no exceptions (i.e. /sw/bin, /sw/usr/lib, etc). That means you don't have to worry about contaminating the Apple-controlled parts of the OS, and uninstalling all customizations is just a matter of trashing /sw. I would never even think of installing anything in /usr or /usr/local (because it "belongs" to Apple).

Does Gentoo MacOS do the same thing? If not, why not????

Re:Let's get it straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

..." I DON'T want linux software..."

Is someone twisting your arm to install OSS stuff?

Re:emerge karmawhore

[Sloppy]

Compiling everything will take more time than you will ever save by adding a few optimizations!

Sorry, but my time is valuable

Your time is valuable, but the computer's time is not. I recommend you use a program called "gcc" to compile, instead of manually translating C into machine language by hand. What this will allow you to do, is have the computer do all this compiling work, while you can do anything you want (write a program, sleep, watch a movie, drink beer, hang out under the escalator at the mall and try to look up girls' dresses, send radio messages to the UFOs to try to get them to return Elvis -- almost anything!), without it taking any of your time.

Linux has changed a lot since 1957. I'm tellin' ya, these fully automated compilers are the shit!!