[175] in SIPB_Linux_Development
Re: Distribution
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (svalente@mit.edu)
Fri Oct 8 20:31:24 1993
From: svalente@mit.edu
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 93 20:30:54 -0400
To: linux-dev@mit.edu
Cc: ghudson@mit.edu, ckclark@mit.edu
People asking for specific packages is a much simpler matter than
people asking for athena, mainly because you don't have to write files
through the translator to run any specific package.
I've begun packaging the stuff in binary form, what I'm doing is in
/mit/linux/packages. It basically has lists of what files from
/usr/athena/bin are needed for each package. Over the weekend, I'll
add the files from /usr/athena/lib to their packages, and most things
will be ready to go.
A housemate of mine (Monty) is talking about setting up Linux on the
ESG PC, and I'm intending to use that to see how well Keesh binaries
transfer to other machines. I don't know when this is gonna happen.
I'm not dealing with source trees or distributions. (Lucky me.)
Most packages are at least a little broken, many are very broken.
This is because of the BSD-ism in all athena code, the fact that the
people building most of the stuff spent very little time debugging it,
that quite often packages were built by people who had never used the
program before and had no idea how to check what was or was not
working, etc.
We should set up a mailing list for bugs. I recommend
linux-athena-bugs-that-probably-wont-be-fixed@mit. People should
understand that we're doing this in our copious spare time(tm).
Hmm... This linux-athena project has been going on for several months
and it looks like it's finally time to unleash it on the world at
large.
I'll be hiding in the closet.
-Sal.
