conclusion: debian portability, openbsd port
>From the protracted (thanks, aj!) discussion on this subject and
some general targets concerning the openbsd ports I have reached
the following conclusion:
- gnu tools are a central part of the debian GNU/Hurd/Linux
distribution. Some people feel hurt or consider it hostile if
their status within the distribution is challenged. However, as
someone pointed out, this is not defined in policy anywhere and
package dependencys should make it possible to replce one
toolset with the other. So it should be possible in the
distant future to have the bsd tools on debian openbsd replaced
with the gnu tools, if one likes it better that way. Perhaps
(?) similar things become possible with the hurd/linux systems?
- some statement about the different toolsets should be made in
policy, anyway. Being ambigous/silent about this point earns nothing.
- since gnu tools are central to all (?) debian specific
programms (dpkg, apt, debhelper, debconf...) the openbsd port
will have to use different build environments for different
parts of the distribution: the debian tools will have to be
build in a gnu environment against openbsd libs and kernel, and
then be used to build and package the openbsd userspace and
kernel in a openbsd environment. Obviously this is suboptimal.
Hopefully further thinking about this issue (on both sides)
will find a more satisfying solution.
+++ personal note:
In some of the discussions on irc (or mail?) I read between the
lines that what I am attempting to do is deeply repulsive and I
am to be considered a criminal and debain subversiv.
I like to belive that my only crime is to try and think
orthogonal to common thought patterns. We do this debain openbsd
port because we like both systems and see that both have
advantages. All people working on this use both systems and like
them. This is about choice, not distruction.
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