Re: crosshurd

[Michael Banck <mbanck@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Wed, May 21, 2003 at 03:41:14PM -0500, Drew Scott Daniels wrote:
> Is crosshurd the bootstrap talked about on
> http://people.debian.org/~mckinstry/ports-status.html ? 

No. crosshurd is something similar to debootstrap, but it needs action
on the side of the user *after* a reboot.

> Jeff Bailey is said there to be working on a bootstrap for hurd-i386
> and crosshurd is written by him.

I don't think crosshurd is much connected to debian-installer. It mostly
supersedes an earlier cross-installation method for Debian GNU/Hurd,
using some of debootstrap's (and apt's) functionality.

> Can anyone tell me more about the status of the hurd-i386 port (as it
> pertains to Sarge).

I can't comment on the overall status for sarge or the port in general
(except that *I* don't think sarge will release a hurd-i386 port), but
there are a couple of things waiting for a full debootstrap port:

- some minor glitches in the hurd package itsself, this will be dealt
  with soon I think

- hurd-i386 will need a proper startup init, I think Jeff worked on
  that

- there are still a couple of required packages unable to be built
  without major hacks and are therefore not in the main archive, those
  need to fixed or substituted (if possible)

- the main task will be the handling of devices and translators. It
  seems that putting in support for translators into tar would be the
  best option, but no work on this has begun yet I think


HTH,

Michael