Neal: I was hacking around with your find_missing_packages.pl and simultaneously trying to learn the debian developer ropes (I've not yet applied, but...). The developers reference section on porting mentions quinn-diff, buildd, and andrea.
quinn-diff is sort of like your perl script, except that it can rule out architecture-specific packages, it can determine packages which are out-of-date as well as not built, and it also provides whether the packages is optional or required in the report. It's already running on a regular basis for the Hurd, here: http://buildd.debian.org/quinn-diff/output/unstable/by_priority-hurd-i386.txt The other thing I wanted, a graph of build dependencies, is also online, here: http://buildd.debian.org/andrea/hurd-i386/source-dependencies.andrea-unstable To all: Has anyone thought of using the distributed autobuilder `buildd'? I'd contribute some cycles to the process. (Well, if I can - my Hurd box is on a POTS connection.) It would be most worthwhile now while there are plenty of packages that just haven't been tried. If we can't use buildd then I'll script another method where I can have my machine pick off some of the easy packages while I sleep *grin* It looks like some simple shell/perl scripting with the output of andrea and quinn-diff would do the trick. On another note, the `archtable' issue for apt seems to be resolved in apt CVS on the `aliencode' branch. I've talked with jgg and checked the sources, and there's definitely something there for Hurd, although I haven't yet verified that it compiles and works (I'm reinstalling my Hurd partition this evening *sigh*). The shared library bug is also fixed in CVS. I'm waiting for a reply on when and if the `aliencode' branch will be released or rolled into the main branch. I suspect (for no good reason) that it will be awhile, if so do we have another way to distribute apt-get and friends, like in the base filesystem tarball, maybe? Is there some sort of from-CVS release method where you don't need an official source package? -Jay 'Eraserhead' Felice
