Re: bin86

[Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2001 at 09:35:47PM -0500, Ken Weingold wrote:
> The debian.org site says that bin86 "a complete 8086 assembler and
> loader which can make 32-bit code for the 386+ processors (under Linux
> it's used only to create the 16-bit bootsector and setup binaries)."
> It is not installed in the initial Debian install.  Both times I have
> done new installs of 2.2r2 and gone to rebuild a new kernel (from the
> source from kernel.org) the build has stopped with an error that it
> can't find as86.  I install the bin86 package and run make again and
> it goes fine.  Am I missing something else that should be there to
> build the kernel or is bin86 really needed?  I am wondering which
> since if the second, bin86 should be installed with the base system.

gcc is not installed on a base system, and neither is binutils. Both are
needed to compile a kernel. The fact is, that a base system is not meant
to serve *any* purpose other than being an "installed Debian system". So
assuming that people want to build kernels is not really the right thing
to do (especially when it causes system bloat for the base).

Ben

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