Re: Bob woes

[Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

* On 2026-09-02 at 18:03 BST, Jonathan Perkin wrote:

> * On 2026-09-02 at 17:28 BST, Rhialto wrote:
>
> > - tell Bob it should just let "make package" put the file where it
> > wants, and not meddle with it afterwards. I don't know if this is
> > currently possible, but it seems the only reasonable solution.
>
> Possibly, but I'd need to think this through carefully.  Currently bob 
> does exactly the same as pbulk in this regard - running stage-install 
> and then stage-package-create to generate the binary package, then 
> perform pkg_add/pkg_delete to test the install, and then finally copy 
> the binary package manually to $PACKAGES.

Thinking through this some more this morning, there are some additional 
complications, and I'm not sure I want to change bob to accommodate this 
style of setup as it would lose a lot of benefits.

It's not just about switching to 'make package' so that PACKAGES is 
saved inside the sandbox.  Bob also does a bunch of other operations 
directly on PACKAGES, such as:

 * Perform all of the up-to-date checks in advance so that builds only
   operate on packages that actually need to be built.  This is in
   direct contrast to pbulk which runs the build script for every
   package regardless, often leading to confusion about why it prints
   "Building foo" when foo doesn't need to be built.  Performing the
   checks up-front makes bob significantly quicker, but as a side note
   is also is a requirement for 'bob status' to work.

 * Creating pkg_summary files using parallel rust-native code, again
   with massive performance benefits compared to pbulk etc.

 * Finding the packages for 'bob publish'.

I think what might work for you is a similar setup to what wiz@ uses, 
where he runs bob inside a sandbox.  If you make that sandbox look the 
same as what the bob sandboxes will look like, then everything should 
work, and you keep the host-vs-sandbox logic to that outer sandbox 
script, so that bob and everything else inside the outer sandbox have no 
idea about your host paths.

--
Jonathan Perkin                    pkgsrc.smartos.org
Open Source Complete Cloud   www.tritondatacenter.com