[openbeos] Re: Haiku distro guidelines [was: Haiku VmwareBuild Environment]

On 2008-04-17 at 19:42:05 [+0200], Andreas Färber <andreas.faerber@xxxxxx> 
wrote:
> Am 17.04.2008 um 15:00 schrieb Ingo Weinhold:
> Now I'm really confused! Currently these Optional Packages are only
> available to developers, building their own images. Does this move of
> yours mean you want to turn Haiku itself into a distribution, with its
> own official run-time package system and format?

Nope, these files are intended only for optional packages. Regarding 
distributions, particularly Haiku Inc.'s own, the general sentiment was to 
include third-party software. And I have a certain suspicion how a third 
party software that is available as optional package will be installed on 
the distribution image: By enabling the respective optional package. (This 
is probably even a good thing and, I guess, the whole distribution should 
be built like that.)

> If yes, then you shouldn't do this in such a hurry.
> 
> If no, then there will be a much simpler solution: Not knowing Jam I'm
> pretty sure this info could be specified inside the Optional Package
> definitions in their Jamfiles and be collected at build-time, whether
> concatenated to a file or stored as attributes. No new metadata text
> format describing more than needed to display the copyright info in
> AboutSystem would be necessary in that case.

Mmh, I see little difference between adding the info to some jam rule and 
just putting it in a separate text file. The advantages of including a 
separate file in an optional package zip are, that they will never be out 
of sync this way, and that even if someone accidently stumbles upon such a 
optional package zip, it will still contain the description file.

> Btw including a file of fixed name in the zip file which is, as you
> say, being unzipped to the image sounds like it would get overridden
> by the next package. Jars do have the fixed META-INF folder, but
> they're not usually being unzipped, especially not to the same folder.

Save for direct installation in a directory (and I'm going to change that), 
all zips are first unzipped into a temporary directory and then copied to 
the image. Between these two steps I will simply add the check for the 
description file, concatenate it to a big file, and remove it. At the end 
the concatenated file will be copied to an attribute in AboutSystem.

The change in build_haiku_image should really be only a few lines and 
switching to another method wouldn't be a big deal. The greater change is 
in AboutSystem.

> Also while I agree that adding the copyrights to the AboutSystem app
> is right, I'd like to throw in whether Linuces actually do that? I
> don't really think we should worry too much about the Optional
> Packages as such; more important would be making the developer adding
> such Optional Packages to her image aware of their licenses.
> Currently, the unzipping of the Optional Packages appears to be one of
> the last things done for building an image, so maybe that could show a
> short message on their license? (e.g. "Unzipping Firefox.zip... (MPL)")

With the description file in the zip file it is actually quite easy to do 
that -- after unzipping of course.

CU, Ingo

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