Keeping these lists in the loop by Rogerio's request. I like keeping
people in the loop, but I don't want to send messages where they're
unwanted; send me a private mail if you think we should trim the CC: list.
On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, Rogério Brito wrote:
> Hi, Asheesh.
>
> First of all, thank you very much for your reply. I'm sorry that I could
> not reply earlier.
No trouble! Long-awaited replies are the Debian Way! (-;
> On Jun 21 2008, Asheesh Laroia wrote:
>> I got this mail because I'm on debian-powerpc.
>
> Nice. I still have a PPC notebook (a G3 notebook) and I am keeping it until
> it dies and I obviously want it to be as useful as possible.
(-:
>> I no longer have PPC machines, but I used to and obviously still know
>> people who do (and can emulate the Free Darwin system in qemu-powerpc
>> if necessary) - I would like to help maintain hfsprogs.
>
> That is great. I would think that this would make hfsprogs be much
> better maintained if I can have some help and discussion.
Awesome.
>> I generally focus on Debian, but I believe Ubuntu is pretty great too
>> and am using it right now. If you'll help with the Ubuntu side I'd be
>> happy to more directly contribute to that too.
>
> I don't have problems with Ubuntu (and, in fact, I'm using a Ubuntu
> install at this exact moment to write you this e-mail, because I don't
> have access to my Debian machine right now).
I hope that we can cooperate well between Ubuntu and Debian.
>> I think the best thing to do is
>>
>> (a) realize that the Gentoo guys are not going to break up their patch
>> into smaller pieces,
>> (b) separate it out ourselves, and
>> (c) hopefully get upstream to accept it.
>
> Yes, that's exactly the thing that I had in mind. In fact, breaking up the
> patch is a minor problem. It is getting newer upstream versions to compile
> and work (and seeing which patches are needed under Debian) that is the
> problem.
Wow, that's... interesting.
Does upstream use CVS? If so, I honestly think we should use
git-cvsimport and create a git repository for upstream, and then figure
out exactly which upstream patches break the Debian/Gentoo patches.
> I would like to clean up many things, like:
>
> * the variable types that Apple uses in their code to standard types (this
> can be accomplished just by a sed/perl/awk substitution).
I think if we can hurry that patch along into upstream, that'd be great.
Might they accept it?
> * the potentially non-cleanliness of 64-bit.
That'd be surprising, since Apple OS X targets 64-bit as I recall.
> * the potential problems with little/big-endian machines.
Again - they have little and big endian machines now.... So I'm
surprised.
> * the use of magic constants in their code.
Blah. Would they accept patches fixing this? (Do we want to practically
reverse-engineer these constants?)
> * the use of some ioctl's to see if they differ in Darwin and Linux (and
> other BSD systems that Debian might support).
Same question.
> That's just for start.
>
> I have, BTW, just talked with some Apple guys and it seems that they are
> open to receiving patches. They are not completely open in the sense that
> they allow access to their CVS/SVN/whatever repository, even of those parts
> that are Free. :-(
Okay, so upstream is just releasing tarballs, and not even read access to
their CVS/SVN/whatever tree? So be it.
>> I think that the nicest way to do this would be to use a revision
>> control tool like git-buildpackage. I'm very familiar with git as-is.
>
> While I am a tiny bit familiar with git, I'm not familiar with the
> *-buildpackage's that are available in Debian. So, I think that I will end
> up learning things along the way.
I'm admittedly not familiar with git-buildpackage, just svn-buildpackage.
But what we're going to do be doing basically amounts to maintaining a
fork with the *hopes* of upstream taking some of our patches, and I think
git is a great tool for that. So hopefully it will make sense for the
debian/ directory too. (-:
> My sponsor for hfsprogs just had a problem with hfsprogs running under
> powerpc and she needs some help soon. BTW, it would be kind of you if
> you included her in your reply (
rhonda@...).
Hi!
>> Thoughts?
>
> Let's work together and see a good exchanging filesystem being better
> supported under Linux!
Yes!
-- Asheesh.
--
Never insult an alligator until you've crossed the river.
