Re: Upgrading gcc and glibc (agian) OT
On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 09:25:43 +0100 Geoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [ most of discussion snipped ] ... In particular I have read that gcc 2.x and 3.x are C++ binary incompatible. I may be wrong (which is why I am asking questions), but I understand this to mean that I may, for example, have C++ lib.foo on my system compiled under 2.x, together with applications compiled and dynamically linked against it. Now I install gcc 3.x and try to compile some new application. It won't compile (or maybe run?) against lib.foo because of the incompatibility, so I recompile lib.foo with 3.x. Now my existing applications won't link dynamically to lib.foo, so I have to recompile them. In itself this is not a very big deal - but I can imagine having an entertaining time tracking down problems in cases where there may be multiple dependencies. Yes, you are likely to encounter all of the above, and no, there is no quick fix. I do have a permanent solution to offer: install gentoo. I have nothing against LFS - a perfectly fine distro, and a good learning experience, but using LFS means that you must become your own dependancy wizard (time and again). I'm basically lazy. Although it is a matter of reading interest to know that package A depends upon B that depends upon libs D E F which may in turn break package G etc., I don't want to deal with that myself. For that work, I've hired a world wide team of subject matter experts at a very reasonable price (namely zippo): the gentoo development team. My last install (probably ever, except for experimentation) was about 2 1/2 years ago. Now my gentoo stable system is up to GCC 3.2.3 and glibc 2.3.2-r1 which is leading but not bleeding edge. During that time I've seen at least four new releases of RH, Mandrake, SuSE, etc. to cope with new functionality, and I'm sure LHS has had at least one release. Meanwhile, my system has been reliably and incrementally upgraded as new functionality is tested and offered by gentoo. Gentoo offers new releases, too, but these are only needed for new installs. Existing users get the new functionality gradually. It will take you about a week to put up a complete system and a little longer to get used to the unique things in gentoo, but you'll never need to wipe clean and uprade your system again, nor will you need to worry much about dependancies. At least 90% of the packages you may be interested in have a gentoo ebuild available. Any others you can install manually in /usr/local or /opt and worry about the dependancies yourself. Good luck. -- Collins Richey - Denver Area if you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for. ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: Upgrading gcc and glibc (agian) OT
On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 08:23:43 -0600, Collins Richey wrote: Yes, you are likely to encounter all of the above, and no, there is no quick fix. I do have a permanent solution to offer: install gentoo. I have nothing against LFS - a perfectly fine distro, and a good learning experience, but using LFS means that you must become your own dependancy wizard (time and again). I'm basically lazy. Although it is a matter of reading interest to know that package A depends upon B that depends upon libs D E F which may in turn break package G etc., I don't want to deal with that myself. For that work, I've hired a world wide team of subject matter experts at a very reasonable price (namely zippo): the gentoo development team. Thanks Collins. Until a year ago the only distro I had run in earnest was SuSE - having used most of v.6 and v.7. I had reached the point where I was running vanilla kernels and almost all my applications were self-compiled - so the rpm stuff was mostly just getting in the way, and the complexity of the distro (lots of indirection), was a bar to me learning more. I decided it was Gentoo or LFS and I actually installed Gentoo first. I could see all the advantages, yet the very convenience of e-builds again left me feeling that I was not fully in control and would not learn as much as I wanted. Also, at that time, there seemed to a couple of issues with Gentoo - the one that springs to mind was CUPS, which I could not get going and one of the CUPS gurus was saying loud and long that the e-build was defective. I therefore took myself off to LSF and I have *really* enjoyed it - but I admit that it now leaves me with this big problem of updating the gcc / glibc core. It is not that I mind rebuilding LFS / BLFS itself, but the hours of post-installation fine-tuning will be a pain - I should have kept better notes as I went along. I have been toying with the idea of Gentoo again recently and I will certainly consider is seriously before I do a fresh LFS installation. Regards, Geoff ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: Upgrading gcc and glibc (agian) OT
On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 16:21:22 +0100 Geoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I decided it was Gentoo or LFS and I actually installed Gentoo first. I could see all the advantages, yet the very convenience of e-builds again left me feeling that I was not fully in control and would not learn as much as I wanted. Also, at that time, there seemed to a couple of issues with Gentoo - the one that springs to mind was CUPS, which I could not get going and one of the CUPS gurus was saying loud and long that the e-build was defective. There was a time about 6-8 months ago when CUPS first began screwing around with Ghostscript (providing their own modifications) that I could not get CUPS to work at all even on my plain-vanilla Laserjet. This is not a gentoo problem. I reverted to the older LPR mechanisms for a couple of months, then emerged CUPS and friends again, and now it works. There are currently new versions of CUPS et al ebuilds, but I wouldn't touch these with a fork until they've aged somewhat. Once burned; twice shy. Sometimes even the competent folks at gentoo can't cope with whatever the CUPS folks have screwed up. -- Collins Richey - Denver Area if you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for. ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
Re: Upgrading gcc and glibc (agian) OT
On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 16:21:22 +0100 Geoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is not that I mind rebuilding LFS / BLFS itself, but the hours of post-installation fine-tuning will be a pain - I should have kept better notes as I went along. That's one of the strong points of gentoo. I started out keeping a log, but that went by the wayside. The many hours of post-installation fine tuning won't need to be repeated, since I will not likely be reinstalling again. I always keep a cloned copy of the system just in case anything really breaks. -- Collins Richey - Denver Area if you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for. ___ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc - http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
