Re: FreeBSD patch for dpkg?
On Sat, Apr 26, 2003 at 02:18:05PM +0100, fred@joshua.worldofpain.net wrote:
>
> I agree that making portable system utilities is a great idea but I am not
> sure who/when is able to do it. In my eyes that is a large undertaking. I
> think those who are interested should definitly try it though.
It isn't a large undertaking. The sysutils package [1] has been created
already for that kind of utilities. All the utilities we can consider
_essential_ for a development system are (and what we can do for them):
[1] http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/sysutils/
fdisk - we have parted
ifconfig - adapt the versions in Hurd package, then merge into sysutils.
mount - adapt the versions in Hurd package, then merge into coreutils.
other useful utilities:
dmesg - easy to write, put it in sysutils
fsck/mkfs - we have them for ext2, maybe it's wothful to put together
a portable ufs utils package.
> Now, relativly early on is probably a good time to decide on a libc to use,
> especially if packages are distributed in binary form. So it guess it boils
> down to do we use the BSD libc and get something working now? Or do we wait
> while glibc and system utils are ported? By something I mean dpkg and apt.
> The vast majority of non system level packages can easily be recompiled for
> BSD libc, I believe, and consequently installed using dpkg and apt.
that's not true. there's an important quantity of software in Debian that
fails to build on GNU (aka GNU/Hurd), and the problem is merely that
system uses a different _version_ of the same C library.
now imagine what will break with a BSDish one, i don't think a port with
BSDish library can finish in less than 5 years from now (which is what
the GNU/Hurd port has taken so far)
> I can see on the list archives that similar discussions have taken place
> before and that the impediment to using glibc is just lack of time and
> resources so a choice has to be made weighing up the benifits of glibc (which,
> I, presonally would like to see used) and the advantage of getting the
> packaging system working sooner.
if it's true that someone in upstream will maintain it, then our time
spent just zeroes. we'd just ensure the sysutils package includes
the utilities we need, then no more work needs to be taken in our part.
--
Robert Millan
make: *** No rule to make target `war'. Stop.
Another world is possible - Just say no to genocide
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