Gentoo on MacOS

[Longman, Bill]

>From the Gentoo News list:

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1. Gentoo News
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Gentoo News
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"Apple, we have a problem" - Gentoo MacOS X Released 
 
Figure 1.1: Derived from Apple's 'Redmond, we have a problem' campaign: 
The Gentoo MacOS announcement
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20040719_macos_problem.png
 
Almost exactly one year after the idea of porting Portage to MacOS X came 
up - and the joint Metapkg initiative[1] between Fink, Darwinports and 
Gentoo took off - a 20-head-strong developer team around Pieter van den 
Abeele[2] (strategic lead) and Daniel Ostrow[3] (operational) is now ready 
to release an extraordinary beast into the wild: Gentoo MacOS. They 
deliver on a promise no other Linux distribution has been daring enough to 
make yet: Portage on MacOS is now fully operational, seamlessly integrated 
as a package manager in a non-Linux operating system. It initially serves 
the main purpose of an SDK for inclusion of new packages, testing and 
patching. Granted, KDE isn't ported yet, but make no mistake: Gentoo MacOS 
is ready for consumption by Macintosh users who want, say, scientific DTP 
via TeX, something they will now be able to simply emerge in OS X just 
like they'd do in Gentoo Linux."Right now it's a tool to install lots of 
commonly requested applications on OS X", explains Pieter van den Abeele. 
"But in a few months, we'll have a port system that builds Darwin from 
scratch, provides a standardised lookup and installation routine for 
Dashboard widgets[4], enhancements and tools like the Desktop Manager[5] 
and many, many more popular OS X applications." Downloading the Gentoo 
MacOS Installer provides users with a patched portage, its tree, and the 
Python modules. It sets environment variables and demands a bootstrapping 
shell script to be run before the first emerge that detects the operating 
system (Panther or Tiger), chooses the relevant profiles and injects every 
application it finds already installed in MacOS X.

 1. http://www.metapkg.org
 2. pvdabeel@gentoo.org
 3. dostrow@gentoo.org
 4. http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard.html
 5. http://wsmanager.sourceforge.net/
 
Figure 1.2: Taming the Tiger with a double-click: The Gentoo MacOS 
Installer
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20040719_macos_installer.png
 
Since Gentoo's own GCC ebuild for MacOS X isn't ready yet, compiling is 
currently done using the Xcode development tools[6] which include GCC 3.3 
provided by Apple. "People already on Tiger can experiment with GCC 3.5", 
adds Pieter. Tiger, the new release of MacOS X, is due in 2005 with its 
brandnew database filesystem Spotlight[7], modernised video services and 
many other features. The Gentoo MacOS developers are busy polishing the 
knobs (a Cocoa user interface is part of the plan), getting iSync[8] 
integration to work (emerge an application on one machine, automatically 
replicate onto all other Macs in a LAN), right down to making Catalyst 
produce Darwin LiveCDs... "But first the cool stuff, then Darwin", 
chuckles strategic lead Pieter. Even though his team is already larger 
than the entire Gentoo Linux PPC developer group, they still train new 
devs almost daily, and whoever wants to help with the project is very 
welcome to get in touch. The public Wiki[9] holds installation 
instructions and serves as a reporting tool for packages outside of 
Portage that already compile without bombing out. The Gentoo MacOS 
Installer can be downloaded from here[10]. 

 6. http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/xcode.html
 7. http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlighttech.html
 8. http://www.apple.com/isync/
 9. http://gentoo-wiki.com/Gentoo_MacOS
 10. http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/
 Full size (1024x768) screenshots of the Gentoo MacOS installation 
procedure: 
 * Installer starts[11] 
 * Detection of OS version and installed software[12] 
 * Still busy injecting detected applications, 'emerge info'[13] 
 * First 'emerge --pretend --verbose system' on MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger)[14] 
 * Pulling in and unpacking sources...[15] 
 * Configuring...[16] 
 * Compiling...[17] 
 * Merged![18] 
 * Modified make.conf to accomodate the alien kernel and userland 
environment[19] 
 11. http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/1.png
 12. http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/2.png
 13. http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/3.png
 14. http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/4.png
 15. http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/5.png
 16. http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/6.png
 17. http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/7.png
 18. http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/8.png
 19. http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/9.png