Re: portability as a goal for debian?
>>>>> "Adrian" == Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de> writes:
Adrian> On 6 Mar 2001, Sam Hartman wrote:
>> >>>>> "Adrian" == Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de> writes:
>>
Adrian> On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Andreas Schuldei wrote:
>> >> While working on the OpenBSD port of debian I notice several
>> >> spots in the debian package infrastructure which are not >>
>> portable accross unices. These are mostly gnuisms of make, but
>> >> also in the gnu file utilitys. Other problems arise when in
>> the >> packages ...
>>
Adrian> Please don't try to let the OpenBSD port of Debian work
Adrian> without the GNU tools. The GNU tools are portable and I
Adrian> don't expect many problems getting them running on
Adrian> OpenBSD. And is there a good reason not to use e.g. GNU
Adrian> make?
>> I don't think the build-depends are such an interesting issue.
>> GNU Make is fairly reasonable to substitute.
>>
>> It's annoying though to see people save a few keystrokes on
>> calls to find and tar so they can avoid specifying -print or
>> use -j or -z. I certainly think that people should be
>> encouraged to submit patches that decrease dependence on GNU
>> tools where there is not a good reason for that dependence.
>>
>> I also think that if we run into maintainers who do not accept
>> these patches or disagreements about where such dependence is
>> appropriate, discussing changes to policy would be a reasonable
>> solution. ...
Adrian> GNU make is build essential. That means I can use it when
Adrian> building a package without declaring a build dependency.
How many times must I say GNU Make is *not* the issue?
Adrian> GNU tar is essential. That means you can assume that it is
Adrian> installed on every Debian system.
Adrian> Do you really want to change this?
No, but I support those who do. A tar should be essential. I see no
reason why it should be gtar. POSIX defines sufficient functionality
that if someone sees significant benefit to using some other tar for
another port, I do not have a problem moving in the direction of POSIX
tar just as we now only require POSIX shell.
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