[OpenWrt-Devel] Remove requirement of an absolute path to the perl interpreter

Thomas Strobel ts468 at cam.ac.uk
Sun May 10 19:12:27 EDT 2015


On 05/10/2015 09:02 PM, Felix Fietkau wrote:
> On 2015-05-10 20:49, Thomas Strobel wrote:
>> On 05/10/2015 02:48 PM, Felix Fietkau wrote:
>>> On 2015-05-10 14:16, Thomas Strobel wrote:
>>>>>> diff --git a/include/feeds.mk b/include/feeds.mk
>>>>>> index 695b03b..27f3e8f 100644
>>>>>> --- a/include/feeds.mk
>>>>>> +++ b/include/feeds.mk
>>>>>> @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
>>>>>>  
>>>>>>  -include $(TMP_DIR)/.packagefeeds
>>>>>>  
>>>>>> -FEEDS_AVAILABLE:=$(shell $(SCRIPT_DIR)/feeds list -n)
>>>>>> +FEEDS_AVAILABLE:=$(perl $(SCRIPT_DIR)/feeds list -n)
>>>>> I think this is the wrong place to make the change. Why not change
>>>>> scripts/feeds to replace the #! line with:
>>>>> #!/usr/bin/env perl
>>>>>
>>>>> - Felix
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the review.
>>>> Unfortunately, "/usr/bin/env" does not exist either. In NixOS there is
>>>> no "/usr", no "/sbin", and only a "/bin/sh ->
>>>> /nix/store/nixos_installation_specific_hash/bash". The absolute path to,
>>>> e.g., "perl" or "env" is different for each installation of NixOS, so it
>>>> can't be hard-coded into the build script. That's why I thought of
>>>> calling "perl" directly from the PATH environment.
>>> Then I think we should hold off on applying changes like the one you
>>> proposed until we have a proper plan for dealing with the rest.
>>> It needs to be possible to call ./scripts/feeds and similar scripts
>>> directly.
>>> How do other perl scripts on NixOS deal with that sort of stuff?
>>>
>>> - Felix
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> The way how NixOS deals with absolute path names in scripts is to patch
>> every script.
>> If software is packed for NixOS, then scripts are automatically or
>> manually patched to execute under NixOS.
>> For software that is not packed but only executed in NixOS, the scripts
>> have to be adapted manually.
> Ugh, that sounds really nasty.

Well, there's a price to pay for having a purely functional, declarative
distribution with atomic upgrades and rollbacks ;). It's amazing when
using the package manager of NixOS for software development, as you can,
e.g., define a separate working environment for each project, especially
as the environments are much more lightweight than Docker or LXC or all
that. Have a look, the package manager is not restricted to NixOS but is
also available for other Linux distributions and for OSX!
>> As OpenWRT is just executed, the scripts have to be adapted manually for
>> each new version or checkout of OpenWRT. The only reasonable way I can
>> think of so far to fix the scripts in OpenWRT is at the calling side,
>> like suggested in my patch.
>> However, there are only 3-4 places that need changing in the build
>> system and in a standard set of packages. So it wouldn't need too much
>> tweaking on the OpenWRT side.
> Given that the approach is incomplete (and quite inconvenient for
> regular use), and any better fix will not need these changes at all, I
> still object to adding them.
> The way I see it, the issue of missing /usr/bin/env is going to come up
> frequently with package-internal builds as well. NixOS users should
> probably just create a symlink or wrapper script at /usr/bin/env, and we
> should make sure that all important places in OpenWrt use it.
> I really don't want to start adding more and more patches afterwards to
> deal with the quirky non-standard behavior of NixOS.
>
>
Changing the scripts in OpenWRT to use /usr/bin/env sounds like a
pragmatic choice that would already make life easier under NixOS.

In addition to changing the scripts, what do you think about referring
to $(STAGING_DIR)/host/bin only for calling host binaries from OpenWRT
scripts?
That is, for calling "perl", the change would be:

-FEEDS_AVAILABLE:=$(shell $(SCRIPT_DIR)/feeds list -n)
+FEEDS_AVAILABLE:=$($(STAGING_DIR)/host/bin/perl $(SCRIPT_DIR)/feeds list -n)

I know that this is very similar to what I proposed before, but it would
have the benefit that there is a clear interface through which OpenWRT
accesses any host binaries.
Package-internal builds could be restricted to only access the host
environment through $(STAGING_DIR)/host/bin as well, maybe helping to
execute correctly once all requirements in $(STAGING_DIR)/host/bin are
filled.


 - Thomas
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