Alright, looks like that's a first round loss to jargon on my part - I did not correlate building a package with compiling software. In my defense, jargon can also do a number on 3D artists in a similar way. That said, from my sample of one, having some extra explanatory details in the help center would probably be a good idea. If I type "compiling" into the search, the only thing that pops up is Rust. "Compile" does return an article which briefly touches on building programs from source code, but switching up the spellings of words was not the first thing that came to mind, and I only saw as much after beginning to put the words together for this post.
That said, let me ask the following: in ideal conditions, was my initial, general understanding of the compiling process correct? I say "general," as yes, compiling the program will depend on the program. OpenIL specifically states that it requires cmake to build (which I've already installed via the software center), etc. I ask this not to oppose the guide in the Help Center, but to confirm or reject the notion that I have the basis of compiling software down in Linux, and that if I was to attempt the things I proposed in Solus, I would - in theory - be successful.
Moving on to the Help Center articles, allow me ask a few more questions if I may be so bold as to do so...
I get the impression that the elements behind the solbuild system are focused on the use of eopkg specifically, with the end goal of ensuring that new packages can be made "portable" amongst Solus users. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. Perhaps I'm just taken aback because the process of setting all of this up seems more complex than determining the necessary compilers and libraries to create a program, etc. I see that the software center has this to say about the package:
"solbuild is a chroot based package build system, used to safely and efficiently build Solus packages from source, in a highly controlled and isolated environment."
...What more is going on here than the basic "configure, make (local), sudo make install (global)" routine? I do not want to seem obstinate (perhaps I am, but I digress), but is there a direction you can point me in to learn more about this approach to compiling software, and how it differs from my previous reading? I interpret it as something... what, I cannot say.
For the packager file to be placed in the .solus directory, is the file literally to be named "Packager" (or is it all lower-case, perhaps?) as per the internal contents of the file? Does the file have a particular extension or is just giving it a name sufficient?
As per installing some of the other tools, I have a few questions as well. This is a bit off-topic, but I was looking through the Software Center for system.devel. I did not see it, though I did notice it was flagged as an eopkg component with the -c flag. What exactly does this mean?
...I am sure I will come up with more questions later (I apologize in advance), but I will close with the following statements: I have no experience with virtual machines. Is there any particular reason I should be looking into virtual machines when it comes to compiling software? If that's something I really need to look into, then so be it. However, is compiling what is generally known software from source... something so risky that creating what amounts to a sandbox environment really necessary in most cases?
And, as stated before, I do not intend to go distro shopping any time soon.
