Re: FW: [SunRescue] OS's

[allbery ece cmu edu]

On 26 Oct, Gregory Leblanc wrote:
+-----
| > Thats the only problem with GNOME - its too Linux-centric, 
| > and sometimes a
| > pain to build on other OSes.
|
| We were just having a chat over on the Sun Rescue Society List about
| different OSs that we could run on our Suns, and got to chatting about GUIs.
| Anyway, there are a couple of comments from me about my build of GNOME
| yesterday morning (October tarball), and another comment from Bill.  He
| seems to know a heck of a lot about the stuff that he works on, and can
| adapt it pretty well.  If HE thinks it's a bear, what about all those people
| who aren't as *NIX savy as he is?
+--->8

The comment is not entirely accurate.  I often do have problems
building non-core parts of GNOME on Solaris, usually because of
unthinking nonportable code (typically, things like setenv() --- come
on, folks, read your POSIX already!), but probably the most important
thing to remember about building GNOME is that you have zero chance of
doing so unless you have replaced/overridden everything possible on
your system with GNU/FSF equivalents.  There is no interest in
supporting *standard* systems, so expect to duplicate your /usr/bin in
/usr/local/bin with the approved GNUware before it'll even begin to
work.  (I've ranted about this before, and been called "stupid" because
"you need to fix all the vendor bugs before it'll work" --- where
"vendor bug" is as likely to mean "not compatible with GNU command line
options" as it is a real bug, but let's not talk about that when there
are GNU principles to uphold, huh?)

For all intents and purposes, if you are not willing to make your
non-Linux/*BSD a Linux/*BSD "wannabe", you might as well assume it
won't work.  This is apparently policy that we are supposed to learn to
live with (or drop everything and join the Brave GNU World,
notwithstanding that there is a real world out there that still
requires non-"approved" environments).

-- 
brandon s. allbery	[os/2][linux][solaris][japh]	 allbery@kf8nh.apk.net
system administrator	     [WAY too many hats]	   allbery@ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering					 KF8NH
carnegie mellon university	  ["better check the oblivious first" -ke6sls]