Re: Hi!

[Daniel Jacobowitz <dan@debian.org>]

On Fri, Dec 04, 1998 at 12:34:42AM -0500, Kirstin S. Reese wrote:
> 
> I've got this wonderful mac sitting next to me, loaded up with dimms and
> scsi drives and a big monitor, yet sitting unused for months because of an
> yukky operating system.
> 
> Meanwhile I wind up doing all my work on this ugly, tired, and old intel
> box. So: something isn't right.
> 
> Anyway, I now have the room to put an alternate os on the mac, but the
> nasty red-hatish nature of linux-ppc gives me the heebi-jeebies. I want
> dselect and proper packages!

Wheeeee!

> Since I'm going to be compiling lots of source in order to have a
> comfortable working environment (and I just Love configuring ;), I thought
> I might share my efforts.
> 
> These would include xemacs, scheme48 (what's wrong with those guile
> people?), scsh, hugs (the haskell user gopher system), the absolutely
> evil-to-bootstrap-and-compile ghc (the glorious glasgow haskell compiler),
> gc (a conservative generational garbage collector for C/C++), es (the
> extensible shell), and related stuff.
> 
> And, I am not opposed to deb-making whatever else the masses might desire.
> 
> I've just installed a minimum version of linux-ppc, but I need some
> pointers as to how to go about debianizing it. (And how to go about making
> good packages and how to be a package maintainer, etc.)



OK.  The basic process of switching to debian/powerpc goes like this:

Get a really small LinuxPPC system up.		Check!
Untar the base2_1.tgz from the ftp site
  somewhere, preferably on another partition.	______
Make a couple of missing devices and delete
  /sbin/unconfigured.sh; set up network in
  /etc/init.d/network; create fstab and
  resolv.conf by hand; configure anything
  else that really wants configuring.		______
Install apt and go!				______



If you want to become a developer, I recommend that you (A) Join the
-devel and -mentors lists, (B) Read the information in Developer's
Corner on the web site.  I believe someone tried to pakage ghc, but I
could be mistaken; ask on -devel.

Dan