[ANN] Rubyx - A first look

Rubyx is a ruby based linux distro. It is also the name of the script which 
creates Rubyx the distro and handles the package management

In light of the recent rubyx/lunar threads, I thought it sensible to make the 
rubyx source available for scrutiny by the ruby community. You can get it 
using Bitkeeper like this:

bk clone bk://ftp.rubyx.org/rubyx
cd rubyx
bk co

You'll see three files;

rubyx	The man script
init		The ruby based init script
strfile.rb	Some code shared by rubyx and init

as root, ./rubyx --help should give you

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rubyx v0.1
    --help                         I guess you know about this

ENVIRONMENT:
    --read      <file>             Read options from a file
    --select    <pkg> <version>    List/specify package version
    --thread-library <name>        List/specify thread library
    --kernel-config  <file>        Supply kernel .config file
    --gcc-compilers <language ...> List/specify gcc compilers
    --cpu       <cpu>              List or set target cpu
    --cflags    options            Specify default c flags
    --cxxflags  options            Specify default c++ flags
    --dj        jobs               Set maximum parallel downloads
    --dt        jobs               Set download download tries
    --bj        jobs               Set maximum parallel build jobs
    --mj        jobs               Set maximum parallel make jobs
    --root      path               Select root directory

QUERY:
    --config                       Show build settings
    --group     <pattern|regex>    List matching groups
    --package   <pattern|regex>    List matching packages

COMMANDS:
    --download  grp|pkg ...        Download selected packages/groups
    --install   grp|pkg ...        Build and install packages
    --upgrade   grp|pkg ...        Upgrade packages
    --uninstall grp|pkg ...        Uninstall packages
    --makedev                      Recreate any missing device nodes
    --distro    <grp|pkg ...>      Build a complete distro
    --chroot    <command>          Chroot into distro, optional command
    --backup    dest directory     Backup configuration ans state files
    --clean                        Remove old package versions

MODIFIERS:
    --bindsrc          Use existing sources
    --check            Do 'make check' or equivalents
    --distcc           Use distcc to speed things up
    --force            Force reinstall
    --pretend          To see what would happen...
    --pull             Update repositories
    --strip            Strip binaries
    --keep             Keep any original config and state
    --verbose          Display more information

USEFUL STUFF:
    gcc languages:     ada f77 java objc (c and c++ are implied)
    thread libraries:  linuxthreads nptl
    Tag examples:      v2.4.21-rc7  date:yesterday  date:2003-01-24

Important! The build machine must be capable of running the generated code,
For example;
 You need a pentium4 build machine to use --cpu pentium4
 You need an athlon64/opteron build machine to use --cpu opteron
 (but its ok to build 64 bit distro from operton running 32bit os as long as 
kernel is 64bit)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How it all works will require further discussion, but if you want to get 
involved, it would be a good idea to ask rubyx to download the sources. To 
get everything, you'll need 4Gb and broadband ;) For just the basics, it's a 
fraction of that but I don't have the figure to hand. Do this as root...

mkdir /my/rubyx/dir  (or something like)
./rubyx --root /my/rubyx/dir --download base net disk (for the basics)
./rubyx --root /my/rubyx/dir --download all (for everything)

If you don't have broadband, you might want to use --dj 1 to reduce the number 
of parallel downloads.

I wrote this in part to learn ruby, so any comments/suggestions on the code or 
style are welcomed. Although I am writing this in Kmail on my laptop running 
Rubyx, rubyx is still very much work in progress, so don't expect too much.
Lots more to discuss, but this will do for starters :)

Andrew Walrond