Michael Goetze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > And, looking at it from the other side, if all of the NetBSD core team > jumped up today and said, "we want our entire distribution packaged > Debian-style, and we want to make it our official distribution > tomorrow," I would applaud them for their wise decision. Mind you, they > wouldn't notice... my applause would be drowned in the tidal wave of > flames sent over by the OpenBSD and FreeBSD folks...
The NetBSD project has had issues with packaging of the base system for a long time. Right now, we basically just have tools that unpack a set of tgz files for the user on initial install. This is clearly not adequate even for simple needs. We also have some serious deficiencies in our third party package tools. This is not to say that the people doing the work are not first class -- they are -- but the tools they are working with have some serious deficiencies. However, at the same time, it isn't clear that we'd want to re-do things like our file hierarchy or replacing our existing userland programs with someone else's. An ideal result would end up re-packaging the existing NetBSD system using far superior tools and would move our third party tools under this improved regime, along with radically improved install tools and similar work. I realize that this is not necessarily what the Debian BSD people would like. They'd like a Debian BSD that looks just like NetBSD but for the kernel. However, that isn't necessarily compatible with the NetBSD project's goals. The obvious compromise, however, would be to make it reasonable to use the tools and most of the packages with either way of living, thus making it possible for both groups to largely cooperate but for a few percent of things that will require differences in approach. This shouldn't be such a horrid thing, of course. Meanwhile, API differences between NetBSD and Linux are things we probably should work on correcting. If there are Debian packages that have difficulty under NetBSD, for instance, it may be reasonable to work on adding things to the NetBSD libc and kernel (the other direction may be more difficult...) > What we really need here is a contact person... someone willing to go > to the NetBSD folks, explain to them what it is we want and how it can > halp what they want. We also need a contact person to organize > webspace, etc., from the Debian project. I think that Matt Green and I might both be willing to help out with trying to play liaison to the NetBSD side. Understand, however, that you're not likely to get universal acclaim from the NetBSD side. Diplomacy is going to be very difficult here, and people are going to have to restrain their impulses to beat "the other" to death for not fully agreeing with them at all times. -- Perry E. Metzger [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- NetBSD Development, Support & CDs. http://www.wasabisystems.com/
