Re: Starting ELF development

[Nikhil Nair <nn201@cus.cam.ac.uk>]

On Mon, 19 Feb 1996, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I have a stock 0.93 a.out system on which I do all my development.
> This needs to go to ELF so I can support the move to 1.1.
> 
> Is there a way to start developing and running ELF, without taking
> the risk of a complete conversion to the unstable 1.1?
> 
> Can I just:
> 
>    - install libc5 and libc4
>    - install gcc 2.7.2
>    - hope for the best?

Erm ... WATCH YOUR STEP!!!  More than one person has completely wrecked 
their system by not taking enough care over this process (I managed it in 
about ten minutes with no problems, simply because I followed what Ian 
Jackson suggested to the letter :-) ).

Here's what I wrote to someone else on this subject:

---------------------------------------

If it helps at all, I can confirm that Ian Jackson's suggestion for the
upgrade procedure works perfectly.  Last night, in single-user mode, I
did (replacing `V' with version numbers):

   dpkg --install dpkg-V.deb
   dpkg --install ld.so-V.deb
   dpkg --remove elf-<...>
   dpkg --remove libc

At this point dpkg did not remove libc.

   dpkg --install --auto-deconfigure libc4-V.deb

Now dpkg replaced libc with libc4.

   dpkg --install libc5-V.deb

and then used dpkg to install binutils, libg++, gcc, aout-binutils and
aout-gcc, before going multi-user again.

---------------------------------------

Note that the default curses library for ELF is ncurses rather than BSD 
curses, so you should probably install these packages too.  Also, I used 
`telinit 1' to go down into single-user mode.

Hope this helps,

Nikhil.