In the past days I started thinking about the few problems that still afflicted Gentoo/FreeBSD. One of those was for sure the impossibility of stripping the files that got installed with the immutable (schg) flag from FreeBSD sources, that and the SetUID/SetGID files unable to drop world readability for the same reason.
Then, thanks also to Timothy’s suggestion a couple of days ago about using P7Zip and using mtree for restore permissions, I found a solution that I’ve already sent to Zac for integrating in the next versions of Portage. Basically I just need to use the mtree(1) utility to save the flags for the tree installed in the image directory, and then use it back to restore them on the merged tree in ${ROOT} (actually, the patch I’ve sent to Zac has a bug I just found, it does not use ${ROOT} :/ But I’m going to fix that soon enough). After that, most of the flags handling was finally moved from the Python side of Portage to the SH side, and it also seems to be faster..
In addition to that, I also removed the code, now redundant, that copied the flags between files using the chflags custom module installed by portage, and replaced the smaller remaining code with py-freebsd, so that Portage won’t have to rely on a non-standard Python module (and py-freebsd is actually maintained, so it’s a good thing).
This solves a couple of the minor annoyances that were still bugging me since I joined the project, so I consider it a good step forward, even if little. The other thing is the custom stage creation I used to use, but that is going away soon too, I just need to wait till Roy releases the alpha4 version of baselayout, then I’ll be all set to start working on the new stages, hopefully.
Unfortunately, I’ll be working all next week so I won’t have too much time for Gentoo, a part the night as usual, but that might not be as bright for me as it used to be. I just hope to be able to leave everything in order, so that I’m not strictly needed while I’m not available.
I should probably be writing some documentation about KDE eclasses soon, as that is really needed, but today I only found the will to update the Amarok maintainer’s guide and the autotools failures guide (the latter with the recent change to versions dependencies). The XMMS debacle stressed me quite enough, although I’m far from burning down, for sure, and I need some way to relax myself after the envelopes thing…
I also want to go down fixing the damn problem with FLAC files with ID3 tags and Xine, but that will probably end up requiring me a lot of time I don’t really have now. I’d be really pleased to have some help, even if it’s a proxy maintainer for stuff or something like that.. I need to start moving some of the stuff I’m taking care on to someone else…
I didn’t even find the time to review some changes for libcdio’s eject code, trying to merge some of the functions of libunieject into libcdio proper, and I feel sorry for that, but I didn’t really have the material time for that right now. I need longer days and more pleasant nights.
