On Sat, 25 Sep 1999, Paul Harris wrote: > could I also please ask Christopher to attempt to build it on his Alpha > (mmm wish i had access ;). also if anyone has access to a platform other > than an i386 (i have that), could i get them to please check it out?
I took the Alpha down today (am moving jobs and it sits at my desk where ever I go). I do have access to a few others, though, and will go ahead and compile it over there. Generating a package may be difficult without my alpha (our fakeroot and libtricks are problematic), but I can give it a whirl anyway. > what do maintainers usually do when checking multiplatforms anyway? they > can't always be asking others to compile for them... Usually, a post to debian-devel or one of the arch-specific lists is plenty. I usually read -devel quite often looking for new test packages to try on the Alpha, so even if I don't respond, it's a good bet that I'm already compiling. If I find a problem, I submit a patch (if I can figure out the source...I'm a little weak in C++), as do most mainline port folk. Also, once you upload the package to master and it's in the archives, almost all of the archs have autobuilders that will try to compile it. Problem is, you have to know where on the net to look to read the logs :) In Alpha's case, it's easy: http://www.complete.org/~buildd > oh and also: why are we _still_ _only_ using i386 binaries? why don't we > compile for i686 or whatever? would it improve the performance much? and > if its because "mirrors don't have space to waste", how would one > recompile a batch of packages for the i686 architecture, just for himself? There has been an on-and-off argument about this for what seems like centuries now. It seems that we still do have i386 users out there and want to make the dist still available to them (I'm included in this somewhat as I'm building up my old i486 again for test builds). Since this is the case, it would take an inordinate amount of space (not really alot, but more than is really good to serve) on the mirrors to have i386 and i686 binaries. > thanks guys (i'm looking for my next package now ;) Hehehehe...There are some good ones out there. I've been tempted to pick up another one, but I would be hard-pressed to work on more since binutils and the Alpha stuff take up so much time. C
