Hello, now that glibc 2.16 is available a new version of CRUX seems to be doable. But before we start working, we should consider some important, upcoming changes besides the usual small updates and improvements [1].
a) Switch our main development platform to the x86_64 architecture [2], the first version should be called CRUX 3.0. At the time Per Liden had created CRUX, the i686 processor on base of the 32-bit Intel IA-32 architecture was state of the art and therefore chosen by him as the default optimization for CRUX. But nowadays, over 10 years later [2], the i686 arch is more or less obsolete, at least for desktop machines. The 64-bit extension to the x86 instruction set, mostly called x86_64, is the the new standard now. We had extensive discussions on IRC about the type of system we want, a pure 64-bit or a multilib system. The main consensus is that we ship a "multilib ready" system, but without the 32-bit compatibility libraries except for glibc-32. The reason for this exceptions is the gcc compiler, which needs the glibc-32 at build- but not at run-time. b) Keep our repository layout as simple as possible At the moment we have official repos for i686 and overlay repos for x86_64 and multilib on top of those. That's ok and the best way to do it at the moment, but not really neat for the final solution. I'd suggest to merge everything needed by a) into our core/opt/xorg repos and add only _one_ additional repo, probably called 'lib32', for the compatibility libraries. c) Create a final CRUX 2.7.2 for i686 TBH I'm unsure if we should do that, but it would be a nice service for all people using CRUX on older hardware and might be the basis for contributed i686 ISOs in the future. IMO updated xorg stuff is a must-have for such a version, however, as the version number 2.7.2 suggests, I wouldn't change the toolchain. The main idea behind is to have a final mostly up-to-date system with a very solid toolchain for the 'old' architecture. d) Device management As outlined in another mail [4], the udev sources has been merged into systemd and it's no longer possible to build a standalone udev with minimal dependencies. It is foreseeable that systemd will become a hard dependency for udev soon. What can we do? - stick with udev 182 or try to extract newer versions from systemd even if we had to add stuff like dbus and intltools to our core ports. How long will this work? - switch our init system to systemd - use devtmpfs together with mdev for device managment IMO going with mdev is the most clear and CRUX-ish way [5], but we might run in greater problems in the future, because more stuff will depend on udev/systemd. This is especially true for all kind of "desktop" software and everything that depends on dbus, *kit and the like. What do you think? best regards Juergen [1] http://crux.nu/Wiki/TODO28 [2] One may ask why not doing both alongside, but that is too much work for our little team, at least as a official version. [3] http://crux.nu/Main/History [4] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributions.crux.devel/2284 [5] From my personal point of view I was never really happy with udev. The whole development is unpredictable and udev is doing all kind of "magic" behind my back. _______________________________________________ crux-devel mailing list crux-devel@lists.crux.nu http://lists.crux.nu/mailman/listinfo/crux-devel
