Re: Successfully bootstrapped pkgsrc-2025Q4 on Solaris 9/sparc with patches

[John Carr <jcarr%poethecat.com@localhost>]

On 2/6/26 9:48 PM, Andrew Randrianasulu wrote:
> I thought about port-sparc, but because this is about pkgsrc itself, 
> not tied to underlaying NetBSD - probably here is the right place?


Greg T. just replied privately, so I sent the rundown to him for a first 
pass.


> By bootstrap you mean whole compiler toolchain too, or mostly bmake 
> and stuff?
>
> I wonder how much software still works in this combination 
> (autotools-based one probably might remember Solaris this vintage, 
> cmake ..... )


Just the bootstrap script, itself. I was trying to not deviate too far 
past the Solaris section from the wiki. I started off with gcc3 from a 
sunsolve mirror - it would have been way more work to try it with 2.95.3 
(which came with the Solaris 2.9 Companion CD).


While I was trying to get pkgsrc working, I compiled some of my more 
needed utilities by hand. Some works out of the box, and some doesn't. 
You're right though - auto-* does compile still, as does make, m4, etc.


> It sad to see Rust taking over important libraries like librsvg 
> (NetBSD does have older librsvg-c, but who knows how long it will work 
> ...) or just small utilities like pngquant . Makes "openness" too 
> dependant on powerful machine, and specific types of machine at that ...


I agree. it's going to leave a lot of retrocomputing out in the cold.