Re: New bc

[Gavin Howard <gavin.d.howard%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Fri, Apr 19, 2019 at 8:47 AM Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> Gavin Howard <gavin.d.howard%gmail.com@localhost> writes:
>
> > Would there be interest in adding my bc as a port?
>
> We call them packages (vs the FreeBSD term port; here port means cpu
> typ), but that's not important.

Oh, whoops. I have been working with FreeBSD and got mixed up. My bad.

> Certainly, this sounds great to have as a package.
>
> The best option if you want to do this yourself is to get access to
> pkgsrc-wip and create it.

Okay, I think I can do that.

> The next best option is for you to ensure that it builds ok on NetBSD, with any
> luck with a normal ./configure interface and then adding it becomes easy.
>
> A question would be about the package name.  You have chosen "bc", it
> seems, which is the name of an existing package, both in pkgsrc and in
> the world beyond.  So you might think of a name that we could use in
> pkgsrc.  And even perhaps rename your distribution so the names line up.

I named it "bc" so that people would know that it is, in fact, a bc.
However, in the Linux distros and other *BSD's, my bc is named
differently, which is possible because the build system accepts both a
prefix and a suffix to add to the executable name.

For example, OpenBSD uses the following:

EXECPREFIX="e" ./configure.sh

and names the package "ebc". It installs the manpages under "ebc" and
"edc", and does the same for locales.

Void Linux is a Linux distro that has my bc as a package. They call it
"bc-gh" and use the following:

EXECSUFFIX="-gh" ./configure.sh

The manpages and locales are installed in the expected locations.

In other words, I can name the package on NetBSD whatever I want, and
it will still work. I do still want to keep my upstream named "bc",
though, just so people know what it is.

> > If so, would there also be interest in investigating whether my bc
> > could replace the current default bc?
>
> If you mean in the base system of NetBSD, that is an entirely separate
> question, for tech-userlevel.  I would say that there has to be a pkgsrc
> entry first before anyone is likely to want to start that discussion.
> And perhaps a few years of maintenance and there is the question of a
> 1-person project (if it is, but it sounds that way from the URL).  I
> don't mean to criticize your efforts - but adopting things into the base
> system is a very hard decision and NetBSD exists over very long
> timescales.

Makes sense.

> If you mean pkgsrc/math/bc, that's out of the question, as there is no
> reason to withdraw that, even if we add pkgsrc/math/foobc, for some
> spiffier value of foo.

Understood.

Gavin Howard