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Re: Aboot package, anyone?



On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, Jeff Noxon wrote:

> I found a source rpm floating around on the net with patches that are
> just a few days old.  The version on azstarnet doesn't work with glibc2,
> recent kernels, or ELF.  I've successfully booted 2.1.116 and 2.1.117
> with the patched aboot on my as200.  (Note that I haven't installed it
> on my hard disk yet -- I'm using bootp.)

Great.  I was afraid it was one of those "sourceless" Alpha necessities :)

> In any case, aboot-0.5 requires three patches.  What's the Debian-approved
> way to deal with packages that require multiple diffs?  Do we just roll
> them all into the Debian diff?  It seems like it would be best to keep
> them distinct, as Red Hat does.

You could do one of three different things to make life easier.  You could
1. roll them together into one big "original" upstream source tar and go
from there.
2. Add the patches to the debianised tree only (letting the original
upstream be pristine and the patches be on our end, basically).
3. Lobby with the upstream author(s) to accept the patches and integrate
them permanently into the upstream sources so that you don't have to worry
about it later.

To give you an idea, when libffm came out, it didn't have a real Makefile
(only a shell script) and only generated a static and profiled library.
I've written a real Makefile and added some new targets.  This was a
rather large patch in comparison to the source, so I e-mailed the authors
and sent them the patches and they're going to include them upstream so I
don't have to think about it anymore.  Also, I think they're going to
include my debian/ tree too making it a no-brainer to maintain.

> I can think of some other problems as
> well: aboot requires the "objstrip" program in the kernel source, and
> it would be nice to write some scripts to do things that people would
> ordinarily do with the makefile.  The howto is also a bit out of date.

As far as objstrip, check with whomever's working on the MILO stuff since
it needs the same thing.  I would tend to think that he's got some
solution for this already (I can't think of one short of compiling a new
kernel via a script which could get ugly).

> I don't mind doing a package, but I don't know a lot about Debian
> packaging requirements.  I'll need some guidance.  Can you help?

Email me with whatever questions you have and we'll only bring up the
basics on this list when I can't answer them :-)  That'll save some
bandwidth and keep you from getting a ton of RTFM mail :-)

C


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