[buug] cockroaches and kernel build

f.johan.beisser jan at caustic.org
Fri Aug 9 14:41:21 PDT 2002


On Fri, 9 Aug 2002, Nick Moffitt wrote:

> 	Now, to defend GAR, it's also trying to solve a number of more
> difficult problems than BSD ports.  It's trying to build on a wide
> variety of systems (did you know that I've gotten GARNOME bug reports
> from HP-UX and AIX users?  We were only half-joking when we said that
> the next batch would probably be from CygWin!).  As far as the BBC
> goes, it's trying to build filesystem images without requiring root
> privilege (which we succeeded in doing, I'm very happy to say!).

the BSD folk have attempted to do much the same with the ports system. at
one point, there was an attempt at having a unified ports tree, but
differences between the various BSD UNIX systems made this a near
impossible task.

there's much to be said for having a ports system that can handle all the
differences between various hardware.

> 	We're also trying to build glibc, which is sysyphian to say
> the least.  Because of this, we're currently somewhat bound to a
> rather specific Debian installation (certain header files confuse
> glibc's build to destruction).  It's a lot like trying to do the BSD
> world plus ports on a system where EVERYTHING is a port.  It's messy.

messy is being kind. the BSD system of keeping a base OS, then having
everything else fairly separate has made some upgrades much easier. other
things are a little more broken, and harder to deal with. glibc being just
one of those little details.

> 	I upgrade my box daily.  Usually I'd say it averages a couple
> of packages upgraded per day -- more on my desktop box.  BSD folks
> find the same thing with their cvsup port rebuilds.  FreeBSD has a
> nice script to automate upgrades of already-built ports.

i upgrade my sources 3 or 4 times a week. i tend to not upgrade ports too
often, since i don't want to deal with breakage. on the other hand, i'll
upgrade the OS every few months. either from the patch branch, or the
-stable branch. depending on my needs.

with my gradual move over to OpenBSD, i've been slowly edging in on using
only teh snapshots. upgrades happen sporatically though, at best.

-------/ f. johan beisser /--------------------------------------+
  http://caustic.org/~jan                      jan at caustic.org
    "John Ashcroft is really just the reanimated corpse
         of J. Edgar Hoover." -- Tim Triche




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