Gentoo Linux's Portage On The Gp2x

[DijiTao]

I don't know how many (if any) of you have used Gentoo linux, but installing it's Portage system on the GP2X *should* make the process of porting pretty much every linux app you've ever heard of trivial.

Portage is Gentoo's package management system, so when you want to install the web browser dillo – all you do is type in “emerge dillo” on the command line and then stand back. Portage will download the source code for dillo, and recursively download the source code for any of dillo's decencies. Portage will then compile and setup everything for you. It's really nice. We'll you can install Portage on other Linuxes as you can learn about from this post on the gentoo linux forums: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=125553 simple enough? All the package in portage can be found here: http://packages.gentoo.org/categories/ (all 10130 of them). Browse through the package database and you'll notice a table of all the processor architectures, as long as the package has a + in this table under arm I think everything should be fine. So the giant obvious roadblock is getting networking working as it will be needed. Once that's out of the way I've played with Gentoo long enough that I think I might be able to work out whatever kinks arise.

Who Interested? Anybody think this is a good idea but me?

 

[Digitalrat]

Compiling would be far too time consuming regarding the speed of the gp2x and we would need a possibility to go online with the GP2X. And if portage is running all the games need a complete keyboard and all the normal programs a mouse.

 

[Ninjia^]

It sounds a good idea, I had a look through the website though http://packages.gentoo.org/categories/ and could only find a few apps that were ARM compatible apart from text readers that is

 

[zipoh]

Hi, hope you don't miind a newbie question here.

what is the kind of linux on the gp2x ? is it gentoo?

 

[chris_r]

The linux on gp2x is just a kernel with a custom gui ontop of it, not a full distro. And there is no point in porting portage because apps source code has to be manually altered to work with the gp2x's sdk. It is not just a case of compiling the source code and it working straight away.

Edit: Too many ports in my porting portage

 

[zipoh]

thanks for the help.

Does the SDK supply any libraries for linking to?

I guess we are talking official SDK kit here. How long before other libraries are released by 3rd party support?

I've been tracking linux on gp32 and it's yet to get there. maybe now.

 

[iignotus]

Get these funrollers out of my internets.

 

[theoddbot]

Does the SDK supply any libraries for linking to?

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The SDK that I've seen includes

SDL-1.2.7
SDL_image-1.2.4
Tremor
image
jpeg-6b
lib-set
libid3tag-0.15.1b
libmad-0.15.1b
libpng-1.2.8-config
libtermcap
libungif
libunicodefont-1.0
ncurses-5.2
popt-1.6.4
zlib-1.1.3

Apparently the current version is still alpha/beta so there could be changes to this.

Gentoo isn't right for this device at all, it is an embedded device and less than 1% of the apps in portage would be useful, and practically none would work out of the box.

 

[joele]

Its a nice thought, having portage or apt which I would prefer ;-) would be nice but as others have correctly pointed out it is simply not practical in this case...

 

[DijiTao]

http://funroll-loops.org/

Anyways....

I see the point about it's limited usefulness - o well... I guess the gp2x won't need a great package management system.

 

[bhxob]

I think the biggest barrier to having apt or emerge on the gp2x would be that many of the system components, libraries and kernel, will be on flashable rom, not exactly something you could just write to when you wanted to add a single lib or package to your system.

part of the luxury of having this system will be the set system components, having a known base to work from for development (as is the case for all game systems), this one just allows everyone to develop. That, however, does not deny the need for a common base.

 

[zipoh]

...many of the system components, libraries and kernel, will be on flashable rom, not exactly something you could just write to when you wanted...part of the luxury of having this system will be the set system components, having a known base to work from

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I think this here device kind of blurs the lines. If everything needed for useful applications can fit in on flashable, on board rom, then it's complete. If you want expansion, there's the SD. There could be many variations of a base system, official or not.

Good to see more real, solid-state computers available. Enough of the disk-concentric thinking.
And I don't like PDA's because the KEYBOARD in my opinion, has got to go!

 

[bhxob]

There could be many variations of a base system, official or not.

Agreed, and that is a good deal of what draws me to this system, and what brought my attention the the gp32 some time ago. My point was more that the normal workings of apt and emerge deny any real "base system". Most everything is optional and configurable (especially with emerge.)

However, building and apt- or emerge like system for loading components to your SD cards on the fly would be something else altogether, and possibly even worth the effort.