Libguestfs - Jul 2014 - supermin: how can I avoid downloading packages everytime when run make

Hi,

When I run make in libguestfs directory, supermin tries to redownload
all packages it needs everytime. This is a blocker for me because:

1. I have a slow network connection, redownloading all packages is just
   a waste of time even though they are not big.

2. My network connection is not stable(especially when visiting sites
   outside of China), sometimes it fails to download the packages in the
   middle of downloading, so I have to restart from the beginning.

3. I'm not expected to consume too much network traffic from within
   office.

So what I want to know is:

1. is it possible to use cached packages that supermin already
   downloaded? How?

2. or better, whether supermin can use packages installed on local
   systems, instead of downloading from web?

I read the man page of supermin and saw there is --if-newer and
--use-installed, but I'm not sure how to use them. Any helps will be
appreciated!

Regards,
Hu Tao

On Wed, Jul 09, 2014 at 10:29:44AM +0800, Hu Tao wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> When I run make in libguestfs directory, supermin tries to redownload
> all packages it needs everytime. This is a blocker for me because:
> 
> 1. I have a slow network connection, redownloading all packages is just
>    a waste of time even though they are not big.
> 
> 2. My network connection is not stable(especially when visiting sites
>    outside of China), sometimes it fails to download the packages in the
>    middle of downloading, so I have to restart from the beginning.
> 
> 3. I'm not expected to consume too much network traffic from within
>    office.
> 
> So what I want to know is:
> 
> 1. is it possible to use cached packages that supermin already
>    downloaded? How?
> 
> 2. or better, whether supermin can use packages installed on local
>    systems, instead of downloading from web?
> 
> I read the man page of supermin and saw there is --if-newer and
> --use-installed, but I'm not sure how to use them. Any helps will be
> appreciated!
Seems that ./autogen.sh --with-supermin-extra-options="--if-newer
--use-installed" works.

Regards,
Hu

On Wed, Jul 09, 2014 at 10:29:44AM +0800, Hu Tao wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> When I run make in libguestfs directory, supermin tries to redownload
> all packages it needs everytime. This is a blocker for me because:
This shouldn't happen, and doesn't -- for me.  The dependencies are
carefully set up so the appliance doesn't get rebuilt each time you do
make.

Can you show the complete output when you run make?

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
virt-p2v converts physical machines to virtual machines.  Boot with a
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http://libguestfs.org/virt-v2v

On Wed, Jul 09, 2014 at 12:55:09PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones
wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 09, 2014 at 10:29:44AM +0800, Hu Tao wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > When I run make in libguestfs directory, supermin tries to redownload
> > all packages it needs everytime. This is a blocker for me because:
> 
> This shouldn't happen, and doesn't -- for me.  The dependencies are
> carefully set up so the appliance doesn't get rebuilt each time you do
> make.
I can't reproduce the problem now, maybe I did something before make but I
forgot.

What I can reproduce is if the download is not completed, next time when
run make, supermin will download packages from the beginning. But once
the download is completed, another make won't cause supermin downloading
packages.

Regards,
Hu