Nekochan Net

Many twists and turns to iron out in the Nekoware stuff -- that's why it's marked beta. This comp.sys.sgi stuff leaves me confused just like the anti-GNU arguement, don't folks like having MORE choices for software? Before I found Nekochan, I felt as if all the commercial sources for software were drying up and if freeware didn't address my need I was SOL. What a happy day it was for me when I stumbled upon this place. My feelings haven't changed about that one bit. My only remaining fear is that Neko gets sick of our yammering and/or the cost and pulls the plug.

Me a culpa on the make tardist whiter, I'll try to get a fixed copy out today. I've also noticed an issue with my tiff package. I really have been under tremendous stress at work and home lately, so haven't have much time to "do things right". Hopefully that will change in the near future. I don't mind the idea of whiter filtering the final product, but I'm inclinded to allow as much freedom as possible in the packaging style, so long as the output plays nice with others. Perhaps whiter, it would just be best if you addressed each packaging issue/blunder on a case-by-case basis.

Being one of the Nekoware beta contributors, i'd like to chip in and say something, hopefully, relevant.

Nekoware Beta is called like that, because it it Beta software. Period. As such, the packages can vary in appearance, like what you see in inst/swmgr, dependencies, and even subtle things like versions on DSO's (Remember the zlib issue a while back? Exactly.) and even bigger things like not running on 6.5.20m.

Granted, not everyone is satisfied with the exact appearance, permissions and ownerships of the installed packages. Give us some slack. It took me a month to do kdelibs and kdebase. Not because of the porting, that took a week, but because i had to swim through swpkg and dependencies and making dozens of versions before i had everything correct. With half-a-gig to build this wasn't something to be done overnight. Also i received feedback from my first QT build, ranging from missing headers to feature request like the mysql plugin, which i thought was great, because people looked at my package and commented on it! I fixed the headers and qmake, but no plugin yet for Mysql (sorry Theo)

My respects to Nekonoko for building the openssh/openssl packages. I use them on my I2 High Impact and it works just like a peach. High hats to others who contribute over there. Yes, i do have 6.5.22m and MPRO 7.4.2 + all patches. But i'm not a snob about it. If someone has issues with any Nekoware Beta package, please PM me. I have the luxury of multiple machines at hand running various versions of OSses, so i can always build something if need be. Please be also patient with the irix os version. It can't be long now for 6.5.21m to be released in public.
As for the swpkg format, Neko is right in his stance adopting freeware layout. Scripts are important, though i haven't used them much. Config files are even a bigger issue, and that can easily being done in swpkg, which i did with respect to kdelibs/kdebase.
We can't please everybody with our interpretation of tardist format. This is something which should grow over time. I also believe that the contributors have a feeling of making tardists because they want to use that software, and to me, this also means a clean install in inst and having the correct dependencies. Make it a group effort and steer people who have problems creating proper tardists, but lets not forget the good spirit of each contributor, which feels (justifiably) proud of his/her (porting) achievements.
Take a look at neko's openssh tardist which is a fine example of a well processed package. I use this as a stepping stone for my build, and i intend to improve my Qt/KDE stuff using this format.

My 2 cents...

Yeees yes I know what Beta means ;-)

BUT! Would you prefer kicking basic things into place a.s.a.p. and then do it good all the time, or 'fix' 6743 packages when moving things from beta to final ? I'd vote for the first. But it seems like most don't.
Understandable because it would indeed involve loosing some freedom. However I'm a person that would gladly turn those freedoms in, in return for good organization.
But then again maybe all this would loose some of its charm. It was just a proposal anyway, don't be too harsh about it :-)

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I think the remark on comp.sys.sgi.* wasn't against the Nekochan software repository in general, it was against recommending prebuilt packages "from the web" in a security related context. It wasn't my remark and I didn't follow the thread over the weekend but I think that is how I it was meant at the start of the thread.

Personally I tend to agree with such a statement. Where security is a primary concern I also wouldn't recommend my own stuff - simply because I cannot guarantee that I didn't break anything. Be it by foolish compiler optimization or short sighted patching.


Gerhard

Ah that makes sense then - I received the info second hand and really should have followed up on it. Too little sleep on my part.

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I think I got them right this time. Please have a look see and let me know.

I also fixed libpng for the new zlib dependancy.