Re: proposal to make bootstrap on Linux prefer pkgsrc by default.

[Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%joyent.com@localhost>]

* On 2020-08-11 at 14:54 BST, Denys Nykula wrote:

> "Jonathan Perkin" <jperkin%joyent.com@localhost> 11 August 2020, 16:07:04:
> > You can pass --full to bootstrap to force lang/nawk to be built and
> > used, so you shouldn't need to do this manually.
> 
> Unless there's awk in PATH, --full exits with an error.
> 
> > I don't think adding detection to do this automatically would be a
> > great idea, awk is a mandatory utility and there needs to be some
> > cut-off point where anyone deliberately running a system without it or
> > some other critical command will need to just work this out for
> > themselves, otherwise where do we stop down the rabbit hole of trying
> > to bootstrap everything from nothing.
> 
> Ideally at cc, sed, and sh. But other required bootstrap utils are all
> much simpler than awk, essentially wrappers around libc functions:
> cat, chmod, cp, echo, dirname, groups, id, ln, ls, mkdir, rm, rmdir,
> tr, uname, whoami. All of them are present in sbase+ubase and toybox,
> which are both common starting points for modern embedded Linux, and
> neither implements awk (both provide sed though). Since pkgsrc tree
> contains its own awk source, why require one from a base system?

It comes down to who you believe should suffer the burden of cost in
making this work.

In my opinion, our bootstrap script is already far too complicated and
is difficult to test and change without risk of breaking many esoteric
bootstrap situations that happen to work ok right now.  Adding the
ability to bootstrap on a system without a working awk would add yet
more complexity at further cost to the simplicity of the script and
the ability for people to make changes without causing regressions.

I also believe that users who are choosing to use pkgsrc on such
esoteric systems will already be fully capable of applying whatever
workarounds necessary to get bootstrap working themselves (as you've
demonstrated).

It's also worth noting that awk is in toybox's list of "Packages
toybox plans to provide complete-ish replacents for".

I just don't think this is something that pkgsrc should be paying for.

-- 
Jonathan Perkin  -  Joyent, Inc.  -  www.joyent.com