On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 12:58 +0000, Peter Marsh wrote: > I'm trying to package FASM (http://www.flatassembler.net/) from > source. It's a self-hosting assembler, and upstream doesn't provide a > makefile. I can't find anything in the docs about how I should > correctly specify a make file and the build-depends (the package will > depend on its self, surely?).
Having a quick look at the bugger it seems that the tarball is not shipping with any build instructions. Additionally, fasm is non-free. Why? Well, there is a restriction on commercial use in its license, which might warrant calling it "open source", but not free software. A circular dependency on itself also seems weird (and probably don't work). You might need to use the binary shipped with the tarball to again compile the assembler itself, but to be honest, I do not see any valid reason to do so (it's compiled already). Also, I wouldn't trust that code personally. Upstream could have slipped pretty much anything into the binary. Lastly, I do see a problem with portability here, since upstream only provides x86 executables, which leaves all other architectures locked-out. > Any ideas? If you still want to package this non-free piece of software you probably should contact upstream and ask for build instructions. Again, personally I would go ahead and use a free alternative that has been already packaged (nasm, yasm, binutils-provided "as"). Still, IANADD, so I might be wrong there. -- Stephan
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