Re: SVN on Synology

On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 5:19 AM Nathan Hartman <hartman.nathan_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 2:21 PM Alan Fry <ttlx0100_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hello.
> >
> > I'm interested in building a package for Synology. Apparently the Synology version was abandoned (I did email them, they would not share who was maintaining it... so I couldn't get what was already done and move it forward).
> >
> > That said, I'm a software developer... however all my experience is in the Windows world.
> >
> > I'd like to take on building SVN and creating the Synology package, but I'm completely lost on the linux tribal knowledge needed to do this.
> >
> > That said, I had posted in the user list, and someone mentioned that there was a need for some Windows help? Maybe I could take that on first, to learn enough about the build process for SVN?
>
> Hi Terry,
>
> Based on some quick searches, it looks like the Synology NAS is an
> ARM-based machine and runs a Linux distro which is Debian-based and
> customized by Synology. Assuming I'm correct (let me know if not),
> that tells me that the build should be done on an ARM-based machine
> (which might be the NAS itself).
>
> Does Synology provide any documentation or examples to help software
> packagers? One thing you'll need to know in particular is whether a
> package for Synology is really just a Debian ".deb" package for APT,
> perhaps with some special sauce added to provide a one-click install
> icon or something. If it is, then a package for another Debian-based
> distro might be a starting point.
>
> If you're not comfortable with Linux yet, you might want to experiment
> with it on a virtual machine first, to reduce the risk of messing up
> your NAS with a wrong administrative command. With a virtual machine,
> you could also practice building SVN on Linux.
>
> Regarding Windows, yes, we are rather low on Windows developers, and
> any help is very much appreciated. If you're looking for specifics,
> just ask; there's plenty to do around here. We're all volunteers, so
> obviously you choose how little or how much involvement you'd like.
>
> Since you're a Windows developer, getting SVN building on Windows
> might be a good first step to get acquainted in an environment you
> know. If later on you wish to hack on SVN on Windows, having a working
> build environment will be helpful for that too. :-)
>
> The canonical documentation of how to build SVN is in the INSTALL
> file. You can read the latest revision online at [1] or find it in any
> SVN release zip file or tarball. Unfortunately the Windows sections
> are a little dated, so there's a collection of Windows build notes in
> the email thread archived at [2]. I think I gave you that second link
> before; it documents manual steps to build SVN's dependencies on
> Windows but stops just before building SVN itself. I recommend using
> the email thread to build the dependencies as it's more current, and
> follow INSTALL for the build of SVN itself.
>
> Hope this is helpful... Feel free to ask questions anytime.
>
> Cheers,
> Nathan
>
> [1] https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/trunk/INSTALL
>
> [2] https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r59a30aabaab7bf69effa909b331eaa177418325280ea25859e8fa294%40%3Cdev.subversion.apache.org%3E

There was another tangent from that last mail-thread, that for some
reason isn't shown together with the original thread (neither in my
gmail client nor in lists.aparche.org when you open the threaded view
of that post). Referencing it here for completeness:

https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r9792f252fb45ec94eb188689ea76d3594224c228a595aae4ddb592a7%40%3Cdev.subversion.apache.org%3E

I'm afraid I have lost momentum a bit, so these bits and pieces are
the most recent information about the Windows build (mainly of the
dependencies) we have right now AFAIK. I think a first step might be
to go through these notes again, test them on a new setup, and
consolidate them in our documentation (and from there maybe work on an
updated script that can do part of the work for you, like [3] used to
do at some point).

BTW: since that thread I've started another build of the dependencies,
for 64-bit building on Windows (starting with httpd etc). I have some
scrappy notes, but the gist is that I started with a CMake build for
httpd (after googling a bit), which went very well, but then ran
aground because the SVN build expects some apr and apr-util artifacts
in other places ... so I had to repeat the apr and apr-util builds
with the VS "sln" or "vcxproj" files (after jumping through some
hoops) to get the needed artifacts for the SVN build. This was quite
tragic because the cmake build of httpd was so easy. It might be
worthwhile to investigate making the SVN build on Windows more
flexible so that it can link with a cmake-only-built httpd (with apr
and apr-util). Anyway, I don't have time right now to dig into it
myself, so I'm just throwing it out here as a suggestion.

All help is very welcome :-). Be it with the Windows build, building
on Synology, or something else.

[3] http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/trunk/tools/dev/build-svn-deps-win.pl

-- 
Johan