Re: ghostscript packages for Alpha
On 05/08/11 10:13, Bob Tracy wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 09:26:13AM +1200, Michael Cree wrote:
>> You guys may have been able to compile certain packages on your
>> systems because you have an old install that is partially upgraded.
>
> Can't speak for anyone else reading this, but my "unstable" setup was
> current within a week (might have missed-out on as much as a week's
> worth of updates) when the original Alpha autobuilders went off-line.
Exactly my point. You have an old install from April when the
autobuilders went off line.
But the build daemons always start from a clean state (i.e. the absolute
minimal number of packages to have a working Debian install plus
build-essential) for each individual package build. There are a lot of
packages that can't be installed in such an environment.
> Therein lies the real problem... My memory is probably faulty, but I
> recall the plug getting pulled on Alpha just prior to the most recent
> stable version release, so there's no way to arrive at an equivalent
> stable baseline distribution from scratch other than start with something
> ancient and applying upgrades piecemeal.
No. It's not as bad as that. One uses debootstrap to install a minimal
system into a chroot and that was still possible on the Alpha
distribution until very recently. The only reason why it has fallen
over now is because architecture "all" packages have been coming through
while architecture "alpha" packages have not been built for three months.
For the buildd chroots we still have to install from snapshot.d.o as at
about 1st April then upgrade as much as possible to current.
I think I now know how to get it fixed so one can install with
debootstrap from current. But it means building gcc to a certain
version, downgrading eglibc so we can install that gcc, then upgrading
eglibc, then rebuilding gcc to a newer version. Will take a bit of time
on my xp1000 to complete that. I'm still at the first step --- the
build of gcc-4.4 took 12 hours and the build of gcc-4.5 is still going
after 14 hours.
> In other words, if you weren't
> running "Sid" prior to Alpha getting dropped, you're pretty much hosed.
Spot on; you can't install from debian-ports at the moment, not even
using debootstrap.
Maybe by the end of this week I'll have the conflicts between
libc6.1-dev and gcc resolved, and a new python uploaded.
Then the autobuilders can get fully to work instead of being stalled due
to the backlog of packages that can't be built due to unsatisfiable
build dependencies.
All of that effort will solve the problem of installing from debootstrap
and will allow people to upgrade to current. But we apparently don't
have an installer that allows one to install current on a completely
clean system from scratch. That's a job that will need attention and I
am hoping someone else will be interested in doing.
> Thanks for the explanation of what's going on. If there's anything I
> can reasonably do to help, please don't hesitate to ask.
Will keep that in mind. I'll probably come back to you about iceweasel
sometime in the future. It would be good to get a web browser that
works reliably.
Cheers
Michael.
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