Re: [MiNT] Gentoo/FreeMiNT

[Alan Hourihane <alanh@fairlite.co.uk>]

On Mon, 2008-11-03 at 10:49 +0100, Miro Kropacek wrote:
> Hi Alan,
> 
> at first, thanks for this, finally someone decided to make a first
> step. I was thinking about something like that for a long time but
> never got any further.
> 
>         One thing I forgot to mention is that it REQUIRES! the code
>         I'm working
>         on over in the freemint-enhancements kernel branch, as I'm
>         supporting
>         some new functionality. There'll be a mintlib-enhancements
>         branch to
>         follow this soon too.
> 
> If I may ask, why is all this -enhancements needed? mintlib/freemint
> development isn't such wild -- I fear we'll end with using
> -enhancements only and original mintlib/freemint will obsolete quite
> fast (because everyone will want to use the newest tools).
> 
> And the last note: do you think using gentoo is the best choice? I
> mean, surely most of Atari users would be happy to compile (in case
> they even want to compile anything) stuff via cross compiler so in my
> eyes something like CLFS (cross linux from scratch) or systems with
> support for more architectures (opensuse for example) would be the
> better start -- there are scripts for building everything, little
> patching for mint target would be needed only. Considering the
> frequency of gentoo updates (a big), I can imagine the real meaning of
> jokes about gentoo ;-) Even simple 'sed' recompilation takes about 10
> to 20 minutes on ct60, not speaking about the fact you can do nearly
> nothing in that time (high contrast to present PCs). Add the count of
> the Atari users with reliable ethernet connectivity + freemint +
> ct60/aranym and you'll get quite scary number.
> 
> Don't take this note as discouraring you, I'm really happy about this
> initiative but I want to prevent some errors from the beginning..

No problem at all.

As I said in my original email. I use Gentoo on most of my modern
systems so it's a natural choice for me. And I can, and will maintain it
for the Atari platform, and produce binaries for the lowest 68000 CPU by
default, so everyone can try it. I am thinking about doing a 68060
optimized build as well.

For the -enhancements branch, in my eyes, we're starting to fall behind
on features required by the newer tools. Some need kernel support,
others need more mintlib enhancements. So it's inevitable to keep up.

In the end, I'm hoping the -enhancements branch lands on the main trunk
so everyone will use it, but it'd be nice for people to download the
current branch and try it, even with the current userspace tools, to
ensure things haven't broken there.

And in the end, people will use whatever the feel they need, and we have
to keep up.

Alan.