VL Light or Standard needed for packaging?

[Daniel]

I had thought of trying packaging. I've read that you need a lightweight system to do it so would I need to use a Light edition of VL? I thought I also read that you could use Standard edition but I would like to confirm that. Also, can apps that have been packaged for VL 5.9 work on 6.0 or vice versa?

[rbistolfi]

Hi Daniel. A minimal packaging environment would ensure a minimum of dependencies listed for a package, and for me is more easy to keep it clean. It is strongly recommended to use Light for packaging.
An in deep guide for packaging is located here: http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/docs/packaging
Please post back if you find any problem.
Thanks!

EDIT: Oh, about your last question, some packages will work and some will not work, the reason is that a different toolchain (the tools used for compiling source code) is used in VL6.0

[GrannyGeek]

I had thought of trying packaging. I've read that you need a lightweight system to do it so would I need to use a Light edition of VL? I thought I also read that you could use Standard edition but I would like to confirm that.

Whether you use Light or Standard, you have to keep it clean. This means no proprietary drivers, no added programs, just a stock system with nothing added but patches from the patches repo. As you can imagine, this is probably not what you'd want for your everyday use.

I had an unused 4-gig partition on one computer. I installed VL6 Light on it solely for packaging purposes (I'm just getting started). I've made a backup of that partition on an external hard drive so I can simply wipe the VL6 Light installation and restore it "clean" from my backup after I create a package.

I find it frustrating to be unable to add anything to my VL6 Light partition, but it's necessary if I want to keep it clean.
--GrannyGeek

[Daniel]

So if you package something, you should wipe the partition clean and restore the fresh install from a backup or something? You can't just take the newly made package off the partition and put it somewhere else or something like that?

[rbistolfi]

You just need to remove the packages you installed for solving dependencies, if any.

[Daniel]

Ok, thanks. Also, if I built a package for my own use, for my computer, then I could build it even in SOHO because the point of using a light system for building packages is so that when other people install the package, they won't be burdened by unnecessary dependencies right?

[GrannyGeek]

You just need to remove the packages you installed for solving dependencies, if any.

Thanks, I didn't know that. I'd be a little worried that I missed something.
--GrannyGeek

[GrannyGeek]

Ok, thanks. Also, if I built a package for my own use, for my computer, then I could build it even in SOHO because the point of using a light system for building packages is so that when other people install the package, they won't be burdened by unnecessary dependencies right?

Right. If a package is only for your own use, you can build it on your system regardless of what other stuff you have installed. But if the package is for the repositories so people can install the package on their systems, it needs to be built on a clean system so that there aren't any fake dependencies pulled down when the package is installed.
--GrannyGeek