On Sat, Nov 18, 2006 at 09:33:29AM -0500, Heitzso wrote:
> I have a friend who minimally uses the internet (dialup) and I'm trying
> to compile netbsd on my sparcstation 20 (dual hypersparc, 512M) to give
> to her.  (I tell her it will last forever and the odds are viruses will
> never touch it)
> 
> My core system is current from last spring.  I have not managed to
> update the core system w/o failed compiles since then.  But the core
> system from last spring seems quite stable so I'm tempted to leave it
> be.
> 
> The pkgsrc tree has been a pain.  I've tried a few flavors (current that
> was on the box from a couple months ago, 2006 3rd Q, current-current).
> Most recently I removed the whole /usr/pkgsrc tree and pulled down via
> cvs the current tree but that still failed.  I end up with maybe one
> package out of 100 failing to compile.  Most recently tried to compile
> epiphany, both by itself and as part of the meta pkg gnome.  That fails
> w/:
>   checking whether we can compile and run XPCOM programs... no
> Googling on that I find that error tagged to epiphany recently but w/o a
> fix.  But, that particular program aside, it is still hard for me to
> compile a complete desktop w/o hitting bugs in the compiles along the
> way.
> 
> Two questions:
> 
>   1) which stable snapshot for pkgsrc should I use for this box?  

2006Q3. I'm not sure what you're trying to build, but I've been able to
build more than 5400 packages from it; they're in
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages-2006Q3/NetBSD-3.0/sparc/All/

> 
>   2) should I upgrade or downgrade the core system to a known stable
> release that is geared for the recommended pkgsrc release? and, if so,
> which is recommended for my sparcstation?

I would go with NetBSD 3.1

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--