Hey,
On Mar 10, 2015, at 9:50, Iulian Demetrescu <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Rene,
> i am sorry if my frustration was seeping through every word i wrote and i
> also appreciate updates from all of the contributors. I will try to post my
> updates also when i manage to get my system right and i promise i will write
> an updated tutorial…
Yeah, I know your feeling exactly from all the decade of experience constantly
fixing all these regressions, … can you believe:
* gcc-2.95.3 -> gcc-3. update was massive
* all early glibc updates where a pain
* getting sparc and mips to run on real hardware was a nightmare back in the
days
* the early open source Utah GLX OpenGL to Mesa
* monolithic XFree86 to modular X.org migration
* gnome2
* kde
* cross compiling more
* and all this before virtual machines to test with!
* … etc. pp.
I just realize I will soon be doing this for 20 years (IIRC started somewhere
around 1996-1998), … :-/
> Keep up the good work.
Thanks!
René
> regards,
> JD
>
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 7:44 PM, René Rebe <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Iulian,
>
> thank you for your detailed, in-depth email.
>
> Some of the latest external contributions may have been a bit massive. But I
> nonetheless appreciate such updates, as I can obviously not gather all kinds
> of new packages, nor update all areas that I do not use personally.
>
> I recently built minimal-xorg ISOs for many architectures and will do so
> again soon, and obviously fix any problems I encounter in my daily use.
>
> Any kind of patches highly appreciated - I will go thru your email soon and
> try to reproduce and fix things, too.
>
> René
>
> On Mar 10, 2015, at 1:28, Iulian Demetrescu <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>> i am struggling lately to build again a usable T2 with Xorg and xfce based
>> on the latest t2-9.0 minimal image only to discover that the build became
>> harder and harder to maintain and build.
>>
>> Issue 1: in order to fix packages, sometimes, you have to keep source on
>> error and try to fix the issue there and then create the patches to fix the
>> main stream. On 8.0 this option worked perfectly. Now i cannot compile
>> anymore and get a segmentation fault whenever i try to rebuild a broken
>> package. Steps to reproduce:
>> a. download and install t2-90.minimal ( tested on x86 and x86_64)
>> b. download via SVN the t2 SDE
>> c. configure a t2 build for x86 with minimal packages and iso installation
>> disk, do not forget to add keep src on error, ccache, print build progress
>> on screen,etc
>> d. download the required packages
>> e. start build
>> At this stage it is more likely that one package will fail at some time.
>> Break the build process (CTRL+C), go to the package failed source folder
>> and:
>> f: execute ./debug.sh ( this will put you presumably in the same environment
>> as the build)
>> g: execute as instructed in the manual $MAKE $MAKEARGS
>> h: observe the segmentation fault message
>> How to fix this?
>>
>>
>> issue 2: udev is a big mess and strange.
>> The implementation of udev in 8.0 was working. The current one does not. I
>> cannot test in a virtual machine ( t2 9.0 currently cannot install on
>> VirtualBox) so i use real hardware for build and test. At boot virtual
>> consoles get messed up all the time. sometimes you miss VC1 3 and 6 and
>> other times you miss 2 and 4 ( the links for agetty not the /dev/ttyX) so
>> that console is unusable. tried fixing it a couple of times but gave up.
>> Also because of this, we get a X respawning too fast disabled for x minutes
>> message now and then on the console. Also a lot of links that are supposed
>> to be created ad boot by udev are not linking. Also if you ever try to put
>> the console in anything else other than 80x25 ( 640x480 default terminal
>> mode) and try to use a higher console resolution you will never be able to
>> do that. 8.0 had that in configured corectly. 9.0 does not. Even if the
>> Penguins appear ( a sign that FB was initialized successfuly) the boot never
>> finishes( on screen) and you have no login prompt on any of the VCs you try
>> to use.
>> How to fix this?
>>
>> issue3: build still does not take into consideration old and already known
>> issues
>> I remember clearly, when i wrote my first guide for building t2 from scratch
>> ( and published it later on with the permission and help of Rene) i outlined
>> that after install, in order to have a correct build environment, you still
>> need to build, perl, m4, python, autoconf,etc. The issue persists on the
>> current 9.0 minimal. I still have to build at least m4, python and others
>> just to have a stable build environment.
>> Also i remember once arguing when building GCC ( for x86 and x86_64) that i
>> get an error about unknown memory model for jumps. To fix this you have to
>> use the -disable-sjlj-exceptions in configure params for GCC. No way of
>> getting around this exception and, to be honest, it is buried too deep
>> inside GCC internals to try to figure out why it's not detecting the correct
>> memory model and build correct jump code.So for now, on x86 at least, you
>> have to use the disable switch to build a working compiler. Again i remember
>> e-mailing this to the group but no response was received.
>>
>> issue4: updated packages break more than fix
>> i really know we are all in a rush to get the distribution up to a point ( a
>> more recent one) but i think we do this at the expense of killing a lot of
>> hours in fixing stuff that breaks other stuff. In this way we end up with
>> something that is anything but stable. I know i am just winging but when i
>> took t2 8.0 it took me 4 weeks to actually learn it, build a workable
>> distribution and improve it slowly but steadily. Right now i am at the 7-nth
>> week of fighting to build the basic X without any bells or whistles. An
>> example of course.... mesa package. it was updated i think last week to a
>> new version. But the new version introduced new dependencies (mako )
>> which....do not build correctly because Python is lacking other dependencies
>> that are not by default selected if you enable them. Also basic packages
>> which should build correctly and without issues are becoming a nightmare.
>> apr, intltool, freeglut and the list is constantly growing cannot be built
>> anymore in a correct fashion. apr fails for unknown reasons. if you try to
>> build it several times, it will build correctly because there is no fault in
>> there. The build environment either locks files, or does not give permission
>> to use /usr/bin/install or simply say that some file is busy... busy doing
>> what???. Freeglut fails in building a stupid example because it has a DSO
>> error. To build that example, apparently an extra -lGL is required to be
>> added but because there is no way currently to build the package in fix mode
>> i cannot fix the thing....
>>
>>
>> Finally i admit my limitations. I know how to fix some stuff but for some
>> others i require more experienced assistance. I also know that Rene is most
>> probably overwhelmed with the amount of work he has to do in maintaining
>> this mammoth T2 became. But i would still like to have something solid and
>> workable before we adventure in upgrading and updating stuff. We need a
>> solid base from which to start on. I would really like to see all of us
>> concentrating first on fixing the current distribution to a stable way and
>> later on bringing new stuff in slowly. I understand the need to be more up
>> to date but let's not do that at the expense of destabilizing what we have.
>> We do not benefit from a very large pool of users and if we make the things
>> difficult they will desert the project and it will become harder and harder
>> to go.
>>
>> Regards,
>> JD
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