sandman
Posted Sep 15, 2004 7:53 UTC (Wed) by
angdraug (subscriber, #7487)
In reply to:
sandman by koide
Parent article:
Bruce Perens: the Linux colonel talks (vnunet)
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.
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