Re: glibc

[Steve Price <sprice@hiwaay.net>]

On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, Per Lundberg wrote:

# > 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.

Acutally you'd be quite surprised.  The Ports Collection certainly
doesn't contain all free software but it does respresent a wide
variety of some of the more popular ones.  Here's what I see.

pepito[/usr/ports]$ wc -l INDEX
    2502 INDEX
pepito[/usr/ports]$ grep libgnugetopt INDEX | wc -l
       3

There is one entry in INDEX for every port.  If you exclude the
libgnugetopt port itself there are only two that use it.  So not
as many are "poorly written" as you might think.  I don't have
a problem with getopt_long and using it doesn't mean that it is
poorly written.  Many are just plain evil all on their own. :)

# > 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.

That is what I wanted.  My suggestion was to use one from the
Ports Collection because you can use the patches/* files as a
jumpstart for what needs to be tweaked in order to get it run
on a FreeBSD machine.  This requires zero changes to the base
system (read: no new libc, etc.)  and could easily net you ~2500
FSSTND-compliant .debs with very little effort.

# > 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.

pepito[/usr/ports]$ grep 'Id:' */*/Makefile | grep steve | wc -l
     536

Not a true picture of what I've done over the years.  These are
ones that I've made changes to and was the last one to touch,
but you get the idea.  I think I can help if you have specific
questions. :)  If I can't answer it someone on the mailing list,
freebsd-ports@freebsd.org, will certainly have the answer.

-steve