[SOLVED] Building Slackware from scratch

nobodino · 06-02-2015, 12:24 AM

Has anyone ever tried and manage to rebuild Slackware from scratch as done with L.F.S.?

a4z · 06-02-2015, 12:47 AM

at least 2 people did

http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/armport/

http://arm.slackware.com/

where is think AlienBob's documentation for the cross compile is available, even if this is also already some years ago.

I think rebuild from scratch is not the coolest job, (what in times of yokto and co is somehow sad)

ReaperX7 · 06-02-2015, 05:15 PM

It can be done, but equally it's a pain in the ass to do so due to the amount of dependencies between release status packages.

Honestly, several of us considered it to perform audits of the sources at certain intervals, but after enough knowledge was shared, it was said to be implausible to do so.

Technically, all packages can be rebuilt against the system as-is, and many of us do so for private repos. However, for all intensive purposes, Slack from Scratch isn't advised or practical.

enorbet · 06-03-2015, 07:45 PM

I imagine it might possibly be practical to build from scratch on a small, embedded platform where the hardware and workload never changes, but for a PC there is just no functional advantage.

ReaperX7 · 06-03-2015, 08:11 PM

For a new platform it's actually a must-have, but even then after enough time, packages will start pulling in more and more auto-detected dependencies and doing anything from scratch will become pointless.

Technically, a new platform is the ONLY time you should attempt a from scratch build of an existing OS.

LFS technically is a different beast of a distribution of Linux because it's geared more for research, education, and developmental purposes. You can use it as a functional distribution, but it does require, after enough time, that you learn package management techniques to some degree to be able to effectively manage the system and update packages.

a4z · 06-04-2015, 12:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReaperX7

Technically, a new platform is the ONLY time you should attempt a from scratch build of an existing OS.

not only
abi changes in the compiler or using a different compiler can be also a reason
does of course not happen very often (btw there is one abi change for g++ in the queue)

also it depends on the point of view
is a package that does not rebuild any more broken? some say yes (I for example), some say no.
to ensure that this is not the case you rebuild the world from time to time.

in embedded world if you just change the compiler for the same hardware is a full rebuild of everything for an existing platform is common (even if most fight changes but that's a different story). or add/change some libraries, you often change the config and build the full distribution to get a new image.

and I am pretty sure that there are more reasons

so the documented possibility to rebuild from scratch is a good one (and would spare sometimes a lot of work, arm port...)

nobodino · 06-10-2015, 03:39 PM

Well, when I asked if anyone had tried and managed to build it from scratch, I thought there would be positive answers.
At that time, I had already built it twice. The first time I had written hand notes and it wasn't very clean, but I knew it was achievable.
By now I have tested it two more times and polished it a little bit.
The system you will get through this howto is not a complete slackware system, but a bootable slackware system with all the development tools you'll find in a LFS-7.7 system,and minimum network packages to access internet, but no X11 by now.

Feel free to test it and enjoy as I did.

NoStressHQ · 06-10-2015, 06:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nobodino

Well, when I asked if anyone had tried and managed to build it from scratch, I thought there would be positive answers.
At that time, I had already built it twice. The first time I had written hand notes and it wasn't very clean, but I knew it was achievable.
By now I have tested it two more times and polished it a little bit.
The system you will get through this howto is not a complete slackware system, but a bootable slackware system with all the development tools you'll find in a LFS-7.7 system,and minimum network packages to access internet, but no X11 by now.

Feel free to test it and enjoy as I did.

I just overview your doc, so I can't have an in depth "review", anyway, nice job !

j_v · 06-10-2015, 06:59 PM

@nobodino
Nice work.

chrisretusn · 06-10-2015, 07:12 PM

That is pretty cool.

ReaperX7 · 06-10-2015, 07:55 PM

Pretty good and well documented.

ttk · 06-11-2015, 12:53 PM

Very nice work, sir!

nobodino · 06-26-2015, 10:53 AM

I've finished to build the entire Slackware from scratch (except kde).
And it seems to work properly.

ReaperX7 · 06-27-2015, 10:32 AM

Maybe an audit of the code was warranted after all. At least now we know several packages did need some fixes.

Alien Bob · 06-27-2015, 10:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReaperX7

Maybe an audit of the code was warranted after all. At least now we know several packages did need some fixes.

You still look at Slackware as a different kind of LFS. No package needs fixes - they all work. Slackware packages are not recompiled randomly: only when needed. And the mere fact that the current source does not compile any longer does not make it mandatory to recompile the package which works OK.

Do you actually know what a code audit means?