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[ Note: I'm one of the folks behind Debian GNU/NetBSD; I am, however,     ]
[ going to do my best to not cheerlead or advocate. Please ignore         ]
[ anything that you find offends your sensibilities :) Also note that I   ]
[ have elided much of the origional message, since I'm not replying to    ]
[ it.                                                                     ]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 07:00:45AM -0500, Richard Rauch wrote:

> NetBSD does not, as far as I know, inherantly favor one GNU/LINUX
> distribution over another.  It can't, in fact, because NetBSD's GNU/LINUX
> compatibility is restricted to LINUX proper (i.e., kernel) compatibiliy.
>=20
> If you really know and like Debian a lot, you can probably use the
> Debian distribution's userland in place of SUSE.  (Do note that by
> definition, a compatibility layer is probably always going to lag a
> little.  To the extent that it matters at all, the SUSE uersland for
> compatibility may have resulted in SUSE-related bugs/quirks being
> shaken out of the kernel, so it *may* work slightly(?) better than
> Debian userlands.  And, older GNU/LINUX userlands will probably work
> more readily than newer ones.  At least, that's what I'd expect.)

I'd suggest that the fastest way to get this working would be to copy over
an existing Debian filesystem, or to use the non-native tools provided
by dpkg (along with cpio and tar, possibly) to unpack and set up the
equivalent of the base distribution stuff.

This is what we did for bootstrapping the Debian port, and (apart from
being sort of fragile if you're not careful), seems to work just fine with
NetBSD-native tools.

> As for apt and rpm, I guess that you can use them if you like.  I much
> prefer pkgsrc, having used apt-get on a native Debian GNU/LINUX system.
> Binary packages seem so weird (especially for the we-must-have-your-source
> GNU crowd from which sprang rpm and apt).

Well, there is apt-get source. But it's mostly a matter of style.

> At least a few people report using pkgsrc on GNU/LINUX systems because it
> is so much better to use pkgsrc.  You might consider it for your hybrid
> NetBSD & GNU/LINUX system, too.

Debian GNU/NetBSD uses apt-get primarily because it's more consistant
with the goals below.

> I'm a little puzzled by the whole Debian NetBSD idea, though.  But far
> be it from me to tell others what to do with their computers.  (^&

The short summary of the goals:

1) NetBSD kernel (because, well, it's good!)

2) NetBSD libc (because GNU libc is a bloated monstrosity, IMO)

3) Debian-standard packages, userland, and tools (this implies GNU userland
   for the core utilities, since Debian started life as a Linux distro,
   but the rest is equivalent to whatever lies in pkgsrc). This does mean
   apt-get and dpkg, because, frankly, without those it's not really Debian
   (in the sense of 'I can use it like any other Debian system', or 'It
   fufills Debian Policy requirements').

Frankly, I expect that it will have more appeal to folks already using
Debian GNU/Linux (because they can ditch Linux, if they care, but keep
Debian) than to folks from the NetBSD 'native' world (who really only gain
the Debian administrative policy/layout). Certainly some of the latter
might be interested, but frankly, NetBSD's setup is perfectly good (if
different), so there is far less motivation to switch away from it, as far
as I can see...

> (Also, the question of why you want to run a GNU/LINUX userland on a NetB=
SD
> kernel raises something else that I should mention: "LINUX" emulation
> doesn't mean CPU emulation.  The one reason I've promulgated by
> Debian for the Debian NetBSD project is to use NetBSD's portability to
> run Debian on a wideer range of platforms.  This is all good and
> well, but you should realize that if you are running GNU/LINUX binaries
> on NetBSD, you'll need (a) LINUX emulation available on your desired
> port, and (b) LINUX binaries *for* that port.  The Debian NetBSD project,
> as I understand it, is natively compiling the Debian userland for
> NetBSD kernels, so they can go places that Debian can't go with GNU/LINUX
> binaries running on NetBSD kernels.  I am assuming that you are following
> the baseline intent of "Debian NetBSD" and are running non-i386 hardware,
> so you should read the options(4) man page for COMPAT_LINUX.)

This is correct, and one of the side benefits - honestly, it would be a
'core' one, but the platforms NetBSD supports that Linux doesn't, at
this point, are esoteric enough that I don't think anyone's building a
port on them yet - however, it would be nice to be able to do so with
(relative) ease...

Current active ports are for ia32/i386, sparc (32?), and alpha; I don't
have an ia64 or amd64 box, or I'd consider working on that parallel to the
work on ia32.

Further questions should probably be off-list, but I'm happy to do my best
to answer them, at either address below.
--=20
***************************************************************************
Joel Baker                           System Administrator - lightbearer.com
lucifer@lightbearer.com              http://users.lightbearer.com/lucifer/
=20
(also fenton@debian.org)

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