Re: [OLPC library] [Re] 'OLPC-Health' takes off !!
Andreas --
Comments below.
Regards
-- Bhaskar
On Feb 7, 2008 4:09 PM, Andreas Tille <tillea@rki.de> wrote:
> On Thu, 7 Feb 2008, K.S. Bhaskar wrote:
>
> > GT.M is bootstrapped. Just like you need a gcc to build a gcc, only the
> > dependency is not as strong. Remember that GT.M is both a language and a
> > database, and so bootstrapping is not an unreasonable requirement.
>
> Sounds reasonable. I'm willing to go the bootstrapping path - but I
> have to do it from scratch without a running GT.M.
[KSB] On account of the bootstrapping. You have to have a running
GT.M at some point, or you have to simulate a running GT.M by hand.
Think about bootstrapping a C compiler that is itself written in C.
At some point, you need to do something to compile the compiler, e.g.,
compile it by hand. Once you have an executable binary of the first
compiler, you can use it compile the next compiler, and so on. For
GT.M, you will need the *_ctl.c, merrors_ansi.h, and ttt.c files,
which are generated by GT.M itself (they are all human readable ASCII
files). So, what you can do is to use an existing version of GT.M to
create those files, read them to confirm that they look reasonable,
i.e., no hidden binary code, and then build the new GT.M and use the
new GT.M to build itself and verify that the files are the same. If
you can think of any other way out of the bootstrapping conundrum,
please do let me know.
> > But, in any case, this is outside my expertise. I will take this up with
> > the developers and get back to you. Since I am traveling, I may not close
> > the loop till early next week.
>
> Fine.
>
> > Out of curiosity, are you compiling GT.M as a matter of principle or because
> > the OLPC does not have an i686 instruction set? The binaries that we
> > provide have gone through extensive testing whereas the binaries that you
> > build will not have the same testing.
>
> I would like to build Debian packages to include GT.M into the Debian
> GNU Linux distribution. I don't know whether you remember that we met
> at OSHCA in London 2001. We had a short discussion about Debian-Med.
> The Debian-Med project just tries to include medical software into Debian.
> To build a Debian package you are not allowed to relay on precompiled
> binaries and have to build everything from source. Dispite the discussion
> came up on the OLPC list it has nothing to do with OLPC development in
> principle (except that we try to share some packaging effort and it
> might be that once Debian (and thus Debian-Med) might run on an OLPC.
[KSB] Yes, I remember meeting you in London at OSHCA 2001, but we have
not crossed paths since then. Pity.
I do understand the spirit of the Debian requirement, but I wonder how
it is applied to gcc. You must have gcc to compile gcc.
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