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Re: Win32 port of Debian ?



Oliver Thuns <oliver.thuns@gmx.de> writes:

> I would help you, if there is something I could do. I'm no C programmer
> (only the basics) and I don't know the .deb internals. I have Windows
> and Debian and like it very much. If there is anything I could do, I
> would help. I think it's a great idea to port some Unix program and it
> would be really cool to have a dpkg Windows port and .debs.

Any help would be appreciated.  This particular project is rather low
on my priority list (I try to avoid Windows) - I only do a few hours
on it every couple of months it seems.  Hardly enough to keep up with
the pace of development over at Cygnus.

How to get started?

 - download cygwin from Cygnus and try it out.  Get some of the third
   party ports/binaries installed as well.

 - I've got my dpkg-deb binary at:

     ftp://ftp.jimpick.com/pub/debian/cygwin/dpkg/

   I only spent half a day on it so far, so don't expect anything beyond
   a quick hack.

   It is possible to manually make and install debs using only dpkg-deb - 
   essentially, just using it like a glorified tar.  Anyways, we could
   rather quickly get the beginnings of a base/devel system made
   just by copying binaries into .deb files.  That's how I started the
   ARM port (using Corel's binaries) -- it worked quite well.

   I've got some scripts 75% finished to make a whole bunch of starter
   .debs.  I guess I should finish that stuff off (it should only take
   me another 4 hours, I think).

 - Sign up to be a Debian developer and start learning the packaging
   system.  It takes quite a while to get approved, so it's smart to
   do this early.  There's lots of good info at:
   
      http://www.debian.org/devel/

> Maybe I could setup some Webpages or we could discuss, how we could
> organize the directory structure (you cannot use/create the /bin /usr
> /home /var /lib in the root dir).

We can still use FSSTND (making porting much easier), we just set the
root directory to be somewhere other than just C:\.

If you want to make a webpage, go ahead.  I would have, except I
haven't spent much time on it.  If the port takes off, we could have
an official page on the Debian website (under ports).

Cheers,

 - Jim


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