[WBEL-devel] ia64 port

[Simon J Mudd]

upi@iki.fi (Pasi Pirhonen) writes:

> > I have Itanium equipment and will like to help in the ia64 port of the
> > distribution.
> > 
> > With proper guidance I can provide access to 8 machines (900MHz dual, 8GB
> > of RAM and 143GB of SCSI hard disks).
> > 
> 
> It's not about the port itself. That easy like taking candy from a baby
> after the i386-port has been done, it's about commitement. 

That's important too, but I think it's about having a consistent build
system so building on different hardware is just a matter of adjusting
(if necessary) a few config items and then putting the build process
in action.

Until you have a consistent 100% automatic build script the reliance
on John will be too much and it can cause errors.

If there is a 100% automated build script then if it's wrong you fix
it and rebuild. If that rebuild takes 2-3 days fine, but you know that
you can repeat the process every time.

Then adding support for ia64, sparc, ppc, is if not trivial, certainly
much simpler.

Of course having the build script (which does not yet exist) still
requires the builders, but that's much easier to organise.

For those of you who haven't used the *BSD oses and done a cvsup
... followed by make buildworld; make installworld you won't
appreciate the flexibility that this can give you.

However that said, once you've installed WBLrcX the standard upgrade
path will probably using rpms but that's fine too.

Simon