Seeing that we were stuck with ancient versions of glib and gtk for the powerpc, while other platforms were having binaries of the latest, I have created binaries of both glib 1.1.12 and gtk1.1.12 for the powerpc. Sure there was a problem with glib which prevented both packages from appearing as binaries for the powerpc, but it was a really trivial one -just a well known compiler optimization bug- which had nothing to do with glib in particular, and I was really puzzled that such an easy problem should prevent a package from appearing. I don't know how is the status of debian/ppc in general, but some packages either are not there or are corrupt -gmp2 in particular as is does not allow ssh to run, due to bad ppc assembly code, I have created a generic version which at least runs,albeit not as fast as the assembly version.
Sometimes the problems are trivial -glib case- some times they have an alternative solution -gmp2 case- and sometimes they are quite difficult to overcome -I don't believe there is an impossible case, whatever the cause, if it's a computer program it can be ported the easy way or the hard way. I don't intend to offend anyone, but I would rather see more frequent ports of packages for the ppc, which IMHO seems a little stale to me these days. I have thought of of applying for a debian developer, but the traffic in the list is so high I couldn't keep up really. Instead of trying to be a full developer and get a package to maintain, I offer myself to do some porting of existing packages that are hard to port. I imagine there is a ppc system used only for porting that someone can get an account for. What do I have to do to help in the situation? As I gather there must be a significant amount of packages that have yet to be ported. I am no novice, and I believe I could be of some help. That's all. The packages (qt, glib, gtk, gmp2) are in http://www.uoa.gr/~kmargar/debian. Where could I upload these so that they could be in the official tree (assuming they have been tested first)? PS. I have been trying to build kde packages (from the snapshots at ftp.kde.org) but so far kdebase seems to fail me completely at configuring. I will try once more tonight, but somehow, I don't think I will have any luck. If anyone is interested, drop me a line. Konstantinos Margaritis [EMAIL PROTECTED]
