Subject: bootstrap on OpenBSD / New build platform.
To: None <tech-pkg@netbsd.org>
From: Philip Reynolds <philip.reynolds@rfc-networks.ie>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 03/20/2004 22:57:22
Hi, 

I'm working on porting pkgsrc to ekkoBSD an OpenBSD derivative/fork.

bootstrap tries to get the machine architecture from ``uname -p'',
which is incorrect. Unlike FreeBSD, on OpenBSD systems (at least the
ones I have) uname -p reports the equivalent of hw.model which is an
English description of the processor. e.g.

$ uname -p
Intel Pentium III (Coppermine) ("GenuineIntel" 686-class)

pkg_install requires this to be set to the architecture type.
Because of the extra quotes in this, we actually get a syntax error
in the Makefile. That was merely a symptom of the problem however,
the real cause being the wrong arguments to uname.

Line 262 of bootstrap should be changed to read ``uname -m'' instead
of ``uname -p''.


Aside:

Currently I'm evaluating pkgsrc for use in ekkoBSD as a replacement
for the native OpenBSD ports. How receptive are you to new
platforms? 

The one major advantage we see in pkgsrc is that one of it's goals
is for the packages to build on different systems. As far as I can
see that means that the maintainership of individual ports (or
packages as you call them) does not have to be directly handled by
us. It gives us a set of usable programs that should compile on our
system with minimum effort. This is completely under the presumption
that NetBSD/pkgsrc agrees to support our platform, which I hope
happens.

Apart from the above, I've made a few other modifications to
bootstrap and a few of the pkgtools to enable them to build on
ekkoBSD. 

1) How receptive are you to naming ekkoBSD as being directly
supported?

2) If you do not wish to support ekkoBSD, would you be averse to us
maintaining a separate patchset, but using your packages?

Any suggestions or comments are welcome.

Regards,
-- 
Philip Reynolds                      | RFC Networks Ltd.
philip.reynolds@rfc-networks.ie      | +353 (0)1 8832063
http://people.rfc-networks.ie/~phil/ | www.rfc-networks.ie