Re: Building the Hurd
> Can someone tell me what the best way is to get the latest version of the
> Hurd compiled?
If you just want to get binaries that work, Marcus has just uploaded a new
installation tarball (see recent post on this list). If you truly want to
recompile natively from sources so you can hack on it, then--first, we are
very glad that you do!--then you should get the current hurd sources from
anonymous cvs (see http://www.gnu.org/software/devel.html for how to use
anonymous cvs).
> I also downloaded a newer binary tarball, which runs, but it didn't
> contain the files that I needed to build the Hurd myself. It seems version
> 0.2 is the only version that has a complete tarball with everything you
> need.
That is correct. Please realize that gnu-0.2 is a "complete GNU system"
release from the FSF that predates the Debian/Hurd project by a few years.
Current efforts are going into the "Debian GNU/Hurd" system, an
all-volunteer project led primarily by Marcus Brinkmann, that uses the
Debian packaging system and infrastructure for distributions. The
gnu-YYYYMMDD tarballs that Marcus has been producing are not a complete
system release in a single package like gnu-0.2 was, but closer to a Debian
"base set"--it gives you just enough to get booted and easily use the
Debian packaging tools to install everything else you need. The faqs
floating around should tell you what you need to know about that, but the
short story is that once you get a hurd system from the gnu-YYYYMMDD
tarball, you can use dpkg and related tools to install the debian packages
(.deb files) you want (I use dselect; others have reported using dpkg-ftp,
I think; apt unfortunately does not work yet). To compile the hurd
natively, you need the obvious tools (make, gcc, binutils) and you need the
libc-devel (not the exact name) and gnumach-devel packages. All these
packages are available in the usual debian distribution places. The faqs
on the web should easily give you all the details you might need.
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