sandman

Posted Sep 15, 2004 7:53 UTC (Wed) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link]

It reads like a great tool, but is it ALT Linux dependant, or just apt dependant?

Just APT-dependent, but it also needs a correctly formed package repository. ALT Linux Sisyphus happens to be such suitable repository, but, with varying amount of effort, virtually any RPM-based distro can be adopted for use with Sandman.

Sandman was originally developed by Sergey Bolshakov for Optifacio and SaM Solutions to facilitate repeatable builds of a Network Attached Storage system, which is a small (think ~100 MB iso) subset of Sisyphus. ALT Linux didn't manage to adapt it to their whole distribution, so they resorted to a more limited solution, Hasher, which only builds individual packages, much like Debian's pbuilder. Sandman's complexity is one of the reasons why Optifacio offers Sandman-based distribution building as a service: it takes an insider knowledge to set it up.

Right now Sergey is re-implementing Sandman to take care of its most fundamental flaw: limited package repository versioning. A team in SaM Solutions is working on a more ambitious build system, which, in addition to proper version control, will add support for arbitrary package formats (Debian, BSD ports, etc.) and plug-and-play build servers.

On a related issue, why does ALT Linux get so little attention? It looks like a great alternative.

It appears they have no incentive to go international. Besides, outside of Russia, where, as I've already said, ALT Linux has zero marketing, this same niche is nicely filled by Debian, which is bigger, better, and known world-wide. Disclaimer: I am a DD.