

Re: cross-dpkg problems


>>>>> Roland McGrath writes:

 RM> We need someone (you? Gord?) to come up with a hurd "base"
 RM> package that has just enough to get a system that can run dpkg.
 RM> This needs grub, gnumach, libc shared objects, and the base hurd
 RM> servers and shared libs.

This is what I've been working on.  There are basically four
installation circumstances I can think of:

1) The user has an existing Hurd installation, with dpkg.  This is the
simple case, as the system can be upgraded using the standard Debian

2) They have an existing Hurd system, but no dpkg.  The approach is to
install dpkg, then it becomes case #1.

3) They have some non-Hurd-based system, and a free partition (or disk
space for a subdir install).  I'm very interested in supporting this
case, because the vast majority of people interested in the Hurd are
in this category.  The approach is as you state: install the ``base'',
then we have case #1 again.

4) They are installing from boot floppies.  This is the case that the
Debian installation is targeted for.  Here, the ``base'' can be very
nice, because it's just a tarball that gets extracted during the
install phase.  This tarball will have all the things that the Linux
base would have, and reap the full benefits of the work that the
Debian folks have already done.

In my work yesterday, it turns out that case #3 is quite trivial.
There's a simple method to extract the contents of a Debian package
without using dpkg:

  ar p PACKAGE.deb data.tar.gz | (cd HURDROOT && tar -zxvf -)

Pick the right packages to extract, and voila, we have case #1.  Then,
you can run dpkg natively to create the important state in

That's all for now,

    Lovers of freedom, unite!     \// I use GNU (http://www.gnu.org/)

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