Re: what you can do
On Tue, May 25, 1999 at 10:47:57PM +0200, Thierry Bourrillon wrote:
> It would help to know what you like to do. Currently, there is lots
> of room to getr yourself in. For example, you can try to build your
> favourite Debian package and share with us the problems you
> encounter. If there is a Debian package that does built without
> problems, and it is not in the archive yet, let me know, so I can
> build and upload it. The more you can fix yourself, the better (but
> for massive upstream patches first let us know what you plan to do,
> or it will get a mess).
>
> I thing that build some packages is a good start, so i have some questions
> about it:
>
> what is the method to build the packages on the hurd ? what is needed ?
The method is the same we use under Debian in general, there is nothing
special if you aare used to the Debian way. Go to any Debian mirror, and
enter the directory debian/dists/unstable/main/source (instead main, you can
try contrib or non-free if you don't have moral resistance against not
purely free software :). There are a lot of packages in sections. For
exammple, bash is in base/bash*, tcsh in shells/tcsh*. Emacs in
editors/emacs* and so on.
Some source packages produce multiple binary packages.
Get the source package, which consists of two or three files:
packagename_version-debianrevision.dsc # the source description file
packagename_version.orig.tar.gz # the upstream source
packagename_version-debianrevision.diff.gz # Debian changes if any
Then put them in some directories. Make sure you have the package
utils/dpkg-hurd-dev installed. Then enter:
dpkg-source -x packagename_version-debianrevision.dsc
To e_x_tract the source. You will find a directory named
packagename-version/. Enter it. Then type:
dpkg-buildpackage -B
as root to create the architecture specific packages (architecture
independant packages are already in the binary archive, you can simply get
them and install them. No need to compile them first).
With a bit luck, you will find one or more *.deb files in the parent
directory (the dir that contains the source package) after a successful
compilation.
If it didn't work, make sure you have installed all development packages you
need (all libraries, all header files etc). If errors occure, try to fix
them or let us know (in that order :)
> Where can i find a list of packages that have been succesfully built ?
All packages that have been succesfully built are either in the
binary-hurd-i386 tree of the Debina mirror or on alpha.gnu.org in directory
pub/gnu/hurd/debian. But not all packages can be simply rebuilt. Some
require some manual tweaks. I maintain a list locally, maybe I will post it.
This is my current list of packages that compile out of the box:
ae (962-23.1), bc (1.05a-4), bison (1.25.90-2),
cvs (1.10.4-1), diff (2.7-18), diffstat (1.27-1),
flex (2.5.4a-4), grep (2.3-2), gzip (1.2.4-29),
inetutils (1.3.2-4), less (332-4.1), lynx (2.8.1-7),
make (3.77-6), sed (3.02-1), sharutils (4.2-9),
svgalib-dummy (1.2.13-2), tar (1.12-7)
This list may be incomplete, because I started it from scratch a while ago,
so older packages are not yet included, because I didn't retry them.
If you want to have some tricky packages, try exim and sendmail. Or news
clients.
Do NOT attempt to compile Linux specific packages like zgv, netbase or
similar. This will NOT work and only waste your time, unless you're willing
to do some significant amount of porting and coding.
You should try console only programs for now. I am busily working on X
packages, and there are already pre-versions, but imake is not functional
yet, so you will most likely have problems, because a lot of X programs use
it. But if you feel adventures, try to find a X program that does not need
xmkmf (which has not a Imakefile) and try it.
Even if you fail on a special package, let us know. We are gathering
information. It is likely that you are the first one to try a package.
Thanks,
Marcus
--
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org finger brinkmd@
Marcus Brinkmann GNU http://www.gnu.org master.debian.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de for public PGP Key
http://homepage.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Marcus.Brinkmann/ PGP Key ID 36E7CD09
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