Subject: Re: An attempt at using pkgsrc/which work & which don't (stock)
To: None <root@garbled.net>
From: Joseph Sarkes <joe@js.ne.mediaone.net>
List: port-alpha
Date: 07/15/1998 11:12:15
Tim Rightnour writes:
> 
> The others in that list are currently on my "punt-list"  I give up.  If someone
> else wants to tackle these.. it would be nice.  Also.. I fixed *most* of the
> LP64 bugs and whatnot on the ones I fixed, but if stuff installed and seemed to
> work "out of the box" I left it alone for now.  I don't have the time to fix
> everything in every package.  This would be ideal territory for someone else to
> get involved and clean up those pkgs that work but are ugly.  Most of it
> involves just adding a few headers.
> 

I can perhaps pursue simpler activities like this, what are the typical headers
that are needed that don't follow the normal scheme such that it would work out
of the box?  Once i have some start in this, I should be able to figure from that
point onward, but i don't want to try to figure out the basic 64 bit stuff on my 
own if it is a simple set of facts I need to be aware of. I spent a good while the
other day trying to get some pkg (mit-pthreads i think) to build and never did get
alloca working right. (is this broken on alpha somehow, or am i just making an 
idiot mistake?) Basically, what are the typical changes needed/acceptable? Pointer
to integer casts are another thing i have been seeing, and these do not match up.

> My current plan, and someone needs to second me on this before I send a slew of
> PR's, is to mark the pkgs I see no fix for as NOT_FOR_ARCH= alpha until
> someone fixes them, so builds proceed cleanly. If someone were to fix them, it
> could be simply re-enabled for everyone in the Makefile.  Things like sniffit
> are so completely hosed that it would take me hours to dredge through poorly
> written code and clean up.  No offense to the author.. but it's really nasty in
> there.  I can get it to build.. but it most definately does not work.  
> 

That sounds like a good start, so that it is evident to all what pkgs ARE NOT working
so that the stuff that does goes smoothly. Another thing that doesn't quite work right
(at least on the alpha) is that some dependencies don't seem to get handled properly
and I had to manually install the stuff that was blocking builds to continue afterwards.
These were basic common progs, so perhaps a list of common needed pkgs for building
the remainder would be useful. I am talking about perl, python, gtexinfo, gmake, and 
perhaps a few others. If this info is available already, I missed it.



-- 
Joseph Sarkes                   mailto:joe@mediaone.net
P.O. Box 482
Ipswich, MA 01938
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