Ken Moffat wrote: > So, should we just jump in and update things, knowing that the book > will be broken until a lot more has been updated ? Would a note in > the ChangeLog saying something like "this is probably broken in > places" help ? (Particularly since it is already broken for the > current LFS book).
No, this note belongs elsewhere (e.g., BLFS "Read online" page). > Unlike in the early days of BLFS, we now have so much, sometimes in > such detail (testsuites are my personal bugbear) that no one editor > can hope to build it all. How should we be thinking about getting > towards 7.4 from where we are now ? Make an empty branch, let editors copy pages (and, where possible, upgrade versions) there that contain instructions verified against LFS-6.4rc1 or later and all dependent libraries with versions in this branch. The text should also be checked, and dubious places commented out and converted to Trac tickets with a note "no response in 1 month = permanent loss of this text". This way, we'll lose packages that no editor cares about (users don't matter if they don't report bugs!), and get a slim high-quality book. > I raised a number of tickets this afternoon for version upgrades, > there are a load more I need to raise after I've confirmed things > are working. IMHO there is a need to add some Trac keywords, so that one can separate these two types of tickets with filters. > Firefox3 had *some* discussion, but there is still a lack of any > obvious consensus. I think I'm with dj on this one, but I need to > find time to see if I can make the included nss in 3.0.4/1.9.0.4 use > the system libraries such as zlib. Got to finish beating Qt to > death first! I'm also assuming we don't need to support versions of > gcc and binutils older than what is in LFS-6.4 ? IMHO the less variables to test, the better. > As an aside, any interest in a page explaining why static libraries > are not necessarily a good idea, and gradual implementation of the > instructions to suppress them (as an option), like I did in my > "firefox-example" book ? This belongs to LFS, and a technique based on config.site was thoroughly tested in the LiveCD. > For gnome-2.24, I'm building less of it than I used to (as noted > earlier, I'm stuck on an old version of gdm at the moment because > I'm not willing to build all the current dependencies such as hal > and pam), so I can't update all of it. I *can* update the parts I > use, but that will obviously break the rest of it in the book until > someone else comes along. Then remove (or, if we really decide to start with an empty book, don't copy) what you break. > I also need guidance about new dependencies - for gnome, gvfs is > obviously going to be in because it's an integral part of gnome, but > what about libtasn1 ? The gimp-2.6 needs babl and gegl (and the > docs are still stuck at 2.4). Kde4 wants various things for > postscript and pdf support, such as gnu-ghostscript which can now > replace AFPL ghostscript (and IMHO we can drop espgs). Undoubtedly > there are others - where should we draw the line about what is in > the book and what is just a link ? As I said, if nobody among editors uses it, it is junk. Moreover, the editor who last updates the page must mention what optional dependencies were tested, and, more importantly, what is known not to work. Yes, this contradicts with the earlier words by Randy that all possible combinations must be tested - that's just unrealistic. Look at the commented-out XFCE page. > There is also the kde question. Again, I only use part of it, and > I've dropped some of the dependencies I didn't find useful (for > gwenview), but the bigger question is "do we go to kde4 now (and > drop kde3), or do we have instructions for both ? My experience > suggests that trying to run kde3 and kde4 programs from the same > uid will probably be an exercise in misery (my shared .kderc in a > common /home partition broke konqueror-3.5 after I had used kde4, > until I deleted .kderc). KDE4 is still unusable. The most important limitation is that it is incomplete as a desktop - e.g., there is no IRC client. Also, on the only week I tried to use KDE 4.1.0, I reported 6 bugs and crashes (some of them were marked as duplicates, and one crash is still not resolved). Here they are: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167754 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167821 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167755 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167974 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167819 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167820 And with 4.1.1 (Arch Linux): https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171052 -- Alexander E. Patrakov -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
