Re: glibc

[Per Lundberg <plundis@chaosdev.org>]

On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, Steve Price wrote:

> # As someone told me, I asked on hackers@freebsd.org if there was a glibc
> # port to FreeBSD. Of course they started the traditional ranting about how
>                    ^^^^^^^^^
> Of course?

I guess I've got quite some prejudices in this case. No offence intended.

> Please don't make generalizations about a whole community
> of people that you haven't met because of what what one person with an
> opinion said.  Thanks.

I think my major problem in this case was that I had prejudices before I
wrote to the list, and people responded in exactly the same way I had
feared.. oh, well.

> Actually I think Warner's suggestion has a lot of merit.  Put
> getopt_long and friends that are GNU add-ons that aren't in
> some of the other libcs in libgnu.a and use BSD's libc.

The problem as I see it, with this solution is that it will require a lot
of modifications to a lot of (poorly written) programs, and that will be
quite time-consuming. But of course it's the most "clean" solution.

> Would someone with more experience with dpkg be willing to take
> a FreeBSD port and .deb'ize it for me.

I'm not very sure this is such a good idea. It would be better to do
"real" debs which adhere to the FSSTND and such. But that would probably
not be very appreciated by the FreeBSD community.

> Making .debs of them and introducing more FreeBSD people to the
> concept would probably be the most bang for the buck short term.

Perhaps. It would certainly be a step in the right direction. A perl
script for converting a port to a .deb would probably be the best way to
go? I don't know enough about the port system to decide whether it's
doable, though.