Hello Martin Steigerwald,

> Maybe best to answer for the maintainer of "The Amiga Unix Compendium".

 Here I am :-)


> Today I tried to install some stuff via pkg_add. Works like a charm, but
> there is one problem: It seems that several basic packages are just
> missing from the CD-ROM which prevented KDE or Gnome and I am sure will
> also prevent of many other graphics related X11 applications. Missing are:

> jpeg-6b
> png-1.0.3
> tiff-3.4
> xpm-3.4k
 
> IMHO these are really basic ones. These are contained in the 1.4.1
> distribution on ftp.netbsd.org where I leached them.

 Probably my fault. I've snapshotted the whole m68k packages directory
from ftp.netbsd.org in October 1999 using ncftp. Afterwards I didn't
take the time to try installing some of the packages to see if they
were ok.

 Perhaps ncftp got an error on some packages or perhaps those packages
were not yet available for 1.4.1 at that time. Actually, the 1.4.1
package dir had been freshly created when I downloaded from it. 

 The fact is that the package archive is maintained by vouluntaries
and not all packages have been made available in binary form for all
platforms. Of course the i386 platform is the most up-to-date because
it has a larger user base to rely on. m68k is quite good, but I usually
prefer to download source packages and build them locally to get the
latest versions. And if you don't mind fiddling a bit with simple
compilation errors, the best thing is going right to the official
source distribution archives made available by the authors.


> Then also missing is:
> 
> Mesa-3.0
> gdbm-1.7.3
> giflib-3.0

> Which I found in the 1.4 distrubution of ftp.netbsd.org.

 These have not yet been compiled for m68k on 1.4.1. The 1.4 packages
are usually still usable on 1.4.1 (but it's not always so).

 The advantage/weakness of NetBSD over Linux is that it doesn't
keep 100% binary compatibility across releases. For example, the
latest libc (the system C library) does not contain obsolete functions
and sometimes uses different numeric values for standard defines. If
you need to run old binaries you must also install the old shared
libraries and some additional stuff.

 This policy allows the system to be always as light as possible,
compromising a bit of backwards compatibility. It's not as bad as
it might seem. You get problems mostly with very system-dependent
programs such as top or cdrecord.


> I thought NetBSD 1.4.1 on that CD-ROM actually *is* a *complete*
> distribution which contains all packages to resolve dependencies. But
> pkg_add just did not found them, and it is right, there are *not* on the
> CD-ROM.

 Sorry, it's really a flaw in the distribution. I should have checked
the dependencies myself and completed the package collection by downloading
the missing ones from the 1.4/ dir.


> So actually one needs a copy of NetBSD 1.4 on CD-ROM also? But then why
> are also the jpeg, png, tiff and xpm not included which were on the 1.4.1
> distribution on the server. The NetBSD stuff on the CD-ROM has about
> 370MB, and the rest is used by GeekGadgets and AROS. Maybe it would have
> been better to add another CD-ROM so to have 4 CD-ROMs, charge 10DM more
> for it and include a *real* complete NetBSD distribution.

 The real complete distribution of NetBSD would be a complete snapshot
of the ftp site plus a full copy of the CVS repository. I don't know
exactly how big it is, but it surely won't fit in just one or two CD-ROMs.


> IMHO the purpose of a CD-ROM is to avoid to have to download much stuff
> from the net.

 Sure. And getting started quickly without looking around for files. This
is expecially true for Linux, because you can't


> Without these packages and I guess other may also be missing, one IMHO is
> not able to use any serious X11 graphics application like XView, Gimp or
> anything.


> Also for example the "bash" shell is missing from the CD.

 Argh! This one is really a bad thing... I can't live without bash.


> Is 1.4.1 an incremental distribution to 1.4? This is important to know, to
> advise the user to get an additional NetBSD CD-ROM when he wants to have a
> *full* distribution.

 No, I should have merged packages from both directories into a single
tree. I'm sorry I've undertaken the importance of this, but my own
habit is to get real packages but go for official distributions and
compile them, so I didn't notice the problem at all.

-- 
   _  Bernardo Innocenti <bernie@cosmos.it> or <bernie@worldlink.it>
_ //  Amiga & UNIX developer - Sysop of SystemShock BBS
\X/   WWW: http://hermes.cosmos.it/~bernie - IRC: Bernie