On Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 06:56:21PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 12:36:05PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 05:16:42PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > > The second effort was started up by Robert Millan and uses glibc. I'm
> > > not clear on how this interacts with stuff that's more tightly bound to
> > > the kernel, but I'd expect it to contain at least as much GNU userland
> > > as the other one.
> >
> > This confuses me; http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/porting.html doesn't
> > mention that glibc runs on any BSD platform.
>
> I'm not sure what the state of the *BSD patches is in terms of
> integration with upstream source. There's an alioth project on this,
> IIRC.
Not that good, really.
> > But then it brings up the question: say I want to install Debian
> > GNU/NetBSD to do some experimentation. How do I choose which option I
> > want? There Debian NetBSD port page doesn't seem to differentiate.
>
> Personally, I think the NetBSD libc choice is more pragmatic and easier
> to deal with - I'd expect Robert to disagree :) The port page only
> refers to the native libc port. That probably ought to be updated.
It's definitely easier to deal with - at the very least, it's a lot
easier to develop on. glibc is a confusing mess by comparison.
> > I have no problem with installing NetBSD on a machine, then untarring or
> > unpacking some .debs into a chrooted area, and going from there. What
> > about the "experimental install floppies" from October 2002?
>
> Yeah, that's probably going to be saner in the near future. The
> "Experimental install floppies" ran the NetBSD installer, and then at
> the last moment ran debootstrap, but never worked desperately well...
Stupid question, but why not just use debootstrap to make a tarball, and
then hack the NetBSD installer to use that tarball? Then it's just a
matter of bypassing any damage their installer does to /etc.
> > Speaking of the toolchain... given that gcc is used directly by the
> > NetBSD folks, what exactly is the pain in this department? Couldn't we
> > just build our .debs of it the same way they build and install it?
>
> I'd been using Debian source of gcc with minor patches. gcc-3.3 has
> decent NetBSD support without patching.
The BSD's haven't always had their patches merged into upstream. I'm not
sure why. I do know that the problem has existed with all three BSD's in
varying degrees. Things do seem to be better now than they've been in
the past, though.
---Nathan
