[Glibc-bsd-devel] GNU/kFreeBSD and package report

[Robert Millan]

Hi Brian!

On Thu, Jul 01, 2004 at 10:05:15PM +0000, Brian M. Carlson wrote:
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> 
> I installed GNU/kFreeBSD using livecd2; it works well except for a few 
> things. ssh is broken: it doesn't prompt for passwords or passphrases, 
> and so the only thing that can be done is to use a key without a 
> passphrase. This is obviously not the most secure thing to do. This may 
> have something to do with /dev/tty not appearing in the 'ls /dev' 
> output (it does appear in the 'ls /dev/tty' output).

This is related to the terminal definition. IIRC Guillem knows more about this.

Btw, you can work around it by using screen.

> I've compiled a list of successful and unsuccessful packages that I have 
> attempted to build. Those marked builds built successfully, those 
> marked needs-update need some sort of autotools or dependency update,
> needs-dependencies indicates a need for dependencies that are lacking, 
> and failed indicates a refusal to build, usually because they depend on 
> Linux semantics, instead of BSD.

Generaly, packages depend on Glibc semantics and are not really dependant on
kernel interfaces (Linux, kFreeBSD, etc).

All packages in Debian support Glibc. However, some check for Glibc in the
wrong way. For example they check if you are running Linux before using code
for Glibc, etc. This is the most common source of breakness.

> lcms (config.*)

We generaly don't care much about these (since they are fixed eventualy with
no effort). However, if you want to send a note to the debian maintainer or
upstream it doesn't hurt ;).

> neon (autoreconf; ./autogen.sh)

This is probably libtool-related. But anyway, if that suffices to get it
working it's all fine. Could you send a bug report for this?

> krb4 (builds with db4.2; currently uses db4.1, which is not in archive)

db4.1 should work. Perhaps it needs a libtool/autotools update (which is non
trivial in its weird build system) but that should be all.

> gcc-3.3 (needs !kfreebsd-i386 wherever !freebsd-i386 is, plus 
> libc0.1-dev, build not tested)

gcc-3.2 or gcc-3.3 both need heavy patching in order to work. I did it for
the debian gcc-3.4 package but I don't find it worth to backport the fixes
to 3.2 or 3.3. We currently have hacked binaries for gcc-3.2 and gcc-3.3 in
the archive though.

If you like, you can backport the changes in gcc-3.4 (by differing from
the gcccvs SVN repository) to gcc-3.2 and gcc-3.3, but I find more useful to
spend effort getting gcc-3.4 in shape rather than this.

Currently gcc-3.4 (in experimental) still won't build but it's mostly fixed.
There was a problem with our selection of conditional patches not being
compatible. Would you like to give it a try?

> apache2 (tarball uses out of date autotools that do not know about 
> GNU/kFreeBSD)

Ah, I see. Same as in neon.

> needs-dependencies
> - ------------------
> openldap2 B-D: libsasl2-dev (cyrus-sasl2)
> cyrus-sasl2 B-D: libldap2-dev (openldap2)

Yeah, chicken and egg.

Last time I checked, one of them can be built without the other, but at that
time there were other build-deps I couldn't resolve. Is it like this yet?

> vim B-D: libgpmg1 (gpm)

We don't have gpm (it's Linux-specific). When packages build-depend on it
they should conditionalise it with type-handling. E.g:

Build-Depends: ..., vim | not+linux-gnu, ...

Could you try disabling it and see if it builds/works?

> gcc-3.3 B-D-I: doxygen (doxygen)

Always use -B for building. Then you don't need to care about
Build-Depends-Indep.

> fails
> - -----
> esound (doesn't copy libesd.la to directory because of typo)

Probably also needs a libtool update. Are you sending a bug report?

> gpm (FreeBSD semantics differ from Linux, duh)

Yeah. This is totaly unportable. We'll just port the utilities FreeBSD
provides for this functionality to GNU/kFreeBSD. That's way easier.

> mp3blaster (compiler syntax error on apparently valid code)

If you paste the error and offending code in this list, maybe we can help.

> krb5 (can't find res_search in -lresolv)

Ah, the mithical res_search thing. Guillem fixed some of these bugs IIRC.

> postgresql (no template for kfreebsd-i386)

What do you mean here?

> In order to support sablevm, gcc-3.3 should probably be configured to 
> build libffi2. Then java support will be much easier.

libffi is not supported in gcc. When porting gcc pre3.5 (in upstream), I
gave it an attempt but gave up soon as I didn't care much. If you are going
to fix it, I suggest you do it in upstream CVS, so that 3.5 release fully
supports GNU/kFreeBSD. Then we can backport your patch to older releases in
Debian.

> Also, some 
> packages use autotools but the versions they use don't support shared 
> libraries on this platform. What is the workaround for that?

Yes. This is because of outdated libtool. You just need to libtoolize that
package (and regenerate aclocal.m4, configure.ac, etc) and it'll work.

See bug #242950 for details.

-- 
Robert Millan

"[..] but the delight and pride of Aule is in the deed of making, and in the
thing made, and neither in possession nor in his own mastery; wherefore he
gives and hoards not, and is free from care, passing ever on to some new work."

 -- J.R.R.T., Ainulindale (Silmarillion)