Re: Glibc and NetBSD
On Wed, Jul 24, 2002 at 10:24:48AM +0200, Filip Van Raemdonck wrote:
>
> > This may boil down further to a
> > question of whether it is better to make a small number of large changes
> > to a small amount of code, or a large number of small changes to a lot
> > of code, spread over a lot of source packages.
>
> If a lot of source packages are non-portable and require changes, then they
> should get fixed. Debian is supposed to be portable. Plain and simple.
Debian packages are all architecture portable (because otherwise
are excluded from release) but not system portable.
If you want to know about the linux-specificness of Debian packages in
general, I'd suggest you to ask in the debian-hurd list. The effort necessary
for a _kernel_ port is many times greater than that for an architecture port
already (the GNU/Hurd port has been 4 years being worked on and it's far
from complete yet)
In addition to that, most of the work done by the GNU/Hurd team during
these 4 years is usable for us, making linux-specific packages easy portable
ones. That isn't appliable to libc.
> > Robert Millan wrote:
> > >
> > > Debian has 9000 packages now, and all them are proven to build with the
> > > kernel Linux and the GNU libc. Some are also proven to work with the GNU
> > > Hurd and the GNU libc. Very few are proven to work with the *BSD kernels
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > > and the *BSD libcs.
>
> So let's throw the kernel away too and use the Linux kernel, OK? Oh wait...
> we already have that port.
There are significant advantages on using a *BSD kernel, but noone pointed
an advantage of the BSDish libc (besides kernel compatibility, of course).
I understand people have their preferences, but using BSDish libc at the
beginning sounds like delaying the Debian GNU/*BSD project as a whole.
> Or how about this one: "Very few of them are proven to work on non-i386"
> 'Nuff said.
Not true. Woody just released with support for 11 architectures and a single
kernel/libc duo. It's easy to add a new architecture to Debian.
Anyway, at a later stage we can have _both_ can't we? I just think it's
preferable to concentrate on glibc at the beginning, so that we reach
a usable system soon and people (like me) can migrate. Then it'd make
more sense to port into another libc and even to other unix userland than GNU
so that everyone is happy with their preference.
cheers,
--
Robert Millan
"5 years from now everyone will be running
free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5"
Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 30 Jan 1992
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