Debian GNU/NetBSD: anyone still interested in development?
Hello :)
Some times ago I became interested in Debian GNU/NetBSD port and I
would like to try on one of my Alpha machines, a DEC 3000 AXP which is
not supported by Linux (Turbochannel based Alphastation).
I asked for some testing images but after a brief talk with Micheal
Weber I understood that the development of Debian GNU/NetBSD was
someway at a dead point (or at least I understood so).
It is clear that there is not a real demand for a NetBSD port neither
from the NetBSD user base, nor the Debian user base.
Still, I think that it could be useful, so I started some research to
find out what are the main difficulties in porting and wheter I could
help in this process.
I worked some days in summer holidays, and some more these winter
holidays.
Finally I have a comfortable system to work on (a 4-way AlphaServer
4100 with enough disk space) and things got easyier (and faster!)
After some initial mistakes (compiling Debian packages in NetBSD native
environment) I set up a Debian chroot and compiled packages in the
chroot with a raw GCC installed in /usr/local.
Development is now at a point that the Debian system could be booted
stand alone from SRM and many packages, libraries and tools are binary
compiled directly from Debian sources with little or no patches at all.
There are a few alien libraries in /lib* copied from NetBSD on the
Debian system.
The total count is for 260 packages compiled in *-netbsd-alpha.deb
packages including a bleeding (but working) NetBSD libc package.
Now I have to decide if all this work has been a funny hobby, or if I
should take it seriously.
I have the interest in going on, some time to be dedicated to this work
and enough luck to compile packages with very little patches (and
little NetBSD knowledge!)
It should be a positive influence of GNU/kFreeBSD work! :)
As time goes on, Debian is becoming more and more complex and porting
to other kernels should be come more and more difficult so I think that
at least a minimal working set of Debian should be achived now.
I would ask you all for some guidelines and advices in development, and
development directions too.
For those interested in testing the work, I can provide the packages,
or a tarball of the Debian filesystem and installation howto.
Any advice is welcome!
Happy new year to everyone!
gl
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