[Vm-dev] Build script for Debian 9 stretch and GCC 6

[Max Leske]

On 19 Mar 2019, at 9:48, vm-dev-request at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
wrote:

Hi Fabio,


> Hi Max,
> It'd be great if we could use this to automatically produce Debian 
> packages
> of all supported OSVMs.

Currently the script is very specific to linux64x64/pharo.cog.spur. 
Unfortunately, the mvm scripts alone currently don't suffice to produce 
working builds, which is why the CI scripts include much magic. If that 
magic were moved to the mvm scripts instead (or better yet, if the magic 
were no longer necessary) then producing a Debian package would more or 
less come down to executing the mvm script in an environment prepared 
for creating a Debian package; then our script wouldn't do more than 
prepare that environment.

In that world we could probably also have dedicated script for preparing 
environments for other Debian-like distros. But see about Flatpak below.

> These packages should also work on Ubuntu and other
> Debian-like distros right?

In principal yes. Although every distro would probably need some 
adjustments w.r.t. the dependencies (OpenSSL, libSSH2, etc.).

> What would it take to integrate your script into
> our current CI pipeline?

On our CI we create a chroot jail where we can install all of the 
dependencies. That is probably the main thing we'd need to build into 
the build process.

> Where could the packages be hosted?

The packages could be hosted on launchpad: 
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas.


The alternative to Debian packages are Flatpaks (https://flatpak.org) 
(we're in the process of figuring out how to create those instead of 
Debian packages from the build).
Flatpaks have the distinct advantage that they define their environment 
(their runtime) which is a way out of the dependency hell (no pollution 
of the host, no version mismatches, etc.).
The other great advantage of Flatpaks is that they will run on any 
distro.

Flatpaks can be hosted on https://flathub.org.


I'll let you know when we've figured out the Flatpak creation.


Cheers,
Max

>
> Cheers,
> Fabio