[Tails-dev] ebuild for tails-installer

Good news!

Poncho merged my pull requests in his torbrowser overlay. He also improved my ebuild a bit. That means that option 2) of what I mentioned in my previous email should "just work".

So now, a gentoo user that wants to get tails-installer just needs to do the following:

first, install the layman tool to manage overlays (if it is not already installed):

$ emerge layman

then pull the torbrowser overlay (if it is not installed already):

$ layman -a torbrowser

finally, just the usual installation:

$ emerge tails-installer

Deppending on the user configuration, the system might complain about the package not being marked as stable. In that case, add a line like

=app-misc/tails-installer-4.4.7

to the file /etc/portage/packages.keywords
(again, deppending on the user configuration, the emerge command itself could offer the option of doing this automatically).

If you want to include this information in the web page, and need some further explanations, please contact me.

However, I think roght now it would be better to wait and see if Austin English can manage to include the ebuild in the main portage tree, which would make the process even simpler.

Best,

Miguel Marco


> In gentoo, there are essentially three ways to install a package through the
> package manager:
>
> 1) Packages that are included in the main portage tree (that would be the
> official packages of the distro)
> 2) Packages included in one of the layman overlays (would be like thirthd
> party repos, but can be easily managed with a tool provided by the distro).
> 3) Packages in the local overlay of the user (would be the equivalent of
> downloading a .deb package and install it manually).
>
> I have no contact with the official gentoo team, so can't do much about
> option 1). However, Austin English, who also showed interest in this, might
> help with that. AFAIK, he is on hollyday now. Maybe when he comes back he
> could help with that. If this get fixed, gentoo users that want to install
> tails-installer should just use the standard way:
>
> $ emerge tails-installer
>
> and that would be it (well, maybe some work should be done to allow the
> installation of a package that is not marked as fully stable, but that is
> the
> kind of things that a typical gentoo user is used to deal with)
>
> About option 2), I also don't maintain any of those semioficial overlays.
> However, one of those overlays is focused preciselly on torbrowser and
> related packages. I have already sent a pull request to include my ebuild
> in it. If it is merged, the installation would be almost as easy. Just
> install the layman tool in the usual way and then:
>
> $ layman -a torbrowser
> $ emerge tails-installer
>
> Finally, until 1) and/or 2) become possible, a regular user can use a local
> overlay. In order to do so, (s)he should follow the following steps:
>
> a) enable the local overlay by adding a line like
>
> PORTDIR_OVERLAY = "/usr/local/portage/"
>
> to the file /etc/portage/make.conf
>
> b) copy the directory tails-installer and its content inside of the
> directory
> /usr/local/portage/app-misc
>
> c) run the usual "emerge tails-installer" command.
>
> I hope this helps to clarify the general picture. If you need more details,
> I
> would be happy to provide them.
>
>
> P.S. During the writing of the ebuild I noticed that there are several
> dependencies that are not listed in the README file. They are the following:
>
> configobj
> urlgrabber
> python-distutils-extra
> pygobject
> pyparted
> cdrtools
> gptfdisk
>
>
> best,
>
> Miguel Marco