Re: [MiNT] Sparemint Rebuild Progress

[Paul Wratt <paul.wratt@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 8:36 PM, Mark Duckworth
<mduckworth@atari-source.org> wrote:
> On 1/10/10 6:00 PM, Miro Kropacek wrote:
>>
>> Mark,
>>
>> I agree with all your plans/changes but I'd suggest one thing -- it seems
>> you're trying to achieve gcc4 compatibility and possibility of rebuilding
>> every src rpm to have up-to-date compilable packages. I think it would be
>> good idea to cooperate with Alan and his Gentoo work/plan, there's no point
>> to have TWO distros (one sparemint, slowly becoming updated with newer RPMs
>> and Alan's new gentoo packages), we're way too small community to use /
>> support two different distros... I mention this because it seems Alan is
>> further (from the up-to-date point of view) than you/sparemint in general.
>
> Do you propose abandoning sparemint then?  I don't see any other way.  If
> Alan's patches are available, I will make use of them.  It's fairly easy to
> translate information from gentoo ebuilds to rpm spec files and vice versa.
>  It is in this way that we can cooperate and use each other's work.
>
> Thanks,
> Mark
>
Unfortunately I see the dilemma of both side of this argument:
updating current SpareMiNT (circa 2003) SRPM's to gcc 4.x compaibility
applying Gentoo ebuild sources (circa 2009) to SRPM of the same version

I believe that Marks 4.4.2 effort will have an immediate benifit for
current and older platforms, but that its us ultimately a dead end
(from an up to date point of view) if for no other reason that we will
have 4.4.2 compatible sources of packages which were never 3.3.6 let
alone 4.4.2 compatible

I believe that over time either a system, or a group of people will
port either SRPM's of ebuild to SRPM's of versions currently used in
Gentoo, which may just depend on  number or volume of packages that
have been done by Alan for his MiNT Gentoo distribution

 So I believe you are both right, which at the moment means 2
distributions. I believe not everyone will more to the new Gentoo
distro, simply because its Gentoo, and therefore unfamiliar.

I think also that there are still a lot of 1.16 (even 1.15) users who
would like to update there RPM based distro, especially if they are
still repective of resources, because of there age, and hopefully
benefit from -O3 optimizations also..

After that I thinks its anyones guess, because whe have hard core
platforms on one end that can use most of the new libs etc.. and
average to slow machines on the other end.

Aranym and certain other float about in bewteen, my 3Ghz give me only
a 75Mhz platform, which is lightning fast when its the only thing
running (AFROS) but more like 25MHz on a regular setup

So in conclusion to the 2 distro problem, I would simply say, "dont
worry, be happy", enjoy the choices while you still have them, as even
12 months down the track this may not be reality..

One last point, anyone who happened to be using an ST/e would
theoretically have no problem using Marks effort, which I can not say
would be the case for Alans Gentoo effort (tho it might still be).
Anyway the point I'm trying to get across in this paragraph, is that
this is probably the last time a full blown (modern-ish) usable system
will be available for a genuine 68k machine, that in itself makes
Marks effort totally useful.

I have no doubt that all available RPM's (and SRPM's) will be updated

Cheers

Paul