Subject: Re: abi/abi -- Double Vision!
sterwill@abisource.com
Date: Mon Dec 20 1999 - 10:59:00 CST
Thomas Fletcher wrote:
> Well I think that we can do two things ... I'd be happy to
> re-check things in if it is easiest for you (the whole
> rm -fr abi/abi/abi) since there have been quite a few
> changes. In fact the more I think about it the more
> that is what I would prefer to do.
It would be easiest for me if you could check in the files to
the right places (just a copy of them), and then send me mail,
and I'll handle the "rm -rf /cvsroot/abi/abi" on the CVS server
to save you the (tedious) work of recursively removing files
and directories through CVS.
> In other news I now have company support for doing this work.
> So while I won't be developing at work, I'm hoping to get you
> guys an early release of QNX Neutrino with the photon support
> so that you can potentially add it to your build farm. The
> nice thing is that it will happily co-exist sitting in a
> windows partition as a file so it doesn't require a lot of
> set-up.
Sounds cool. Right now I just have two concerns over the QNX
port. I'm unfamiliar with QNX and its available extensions
(if that's the right word for things like the Photon GUI). The
GPL specifies that software licensed with it must depend only
on other free software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html for
their definitions) or other software provided with the operating
system. The paragraph reads:
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source
code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any
associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to
control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a
special exception, the source code distributed need not include
anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
itself accompanies the executable.
This is why writing GPL software on Windows is almost always OK.
Using the standard Win32 libraries is in compliance with this clause.
Using proprietary custom controls or components would not be,
and an author would not be allowed to use the GPL as a license
for his software.
Now to come to the point: is Photon (and all of the libraries or
run-time environments that AbiWord for QNX would need) "normally
distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major
components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating
system on which the executable runs"?
The second concern, and this one is much ligher than the first, is
over the build host for QNX releases. I realize QNX is quite
an efficient little operating system, but what kind of machine
will it require to build in a reasonable amount of time (under
10 minutes)? The way our build farm works, we have one dedicated
host for each operating system, so we can do concurrent builds for
releases. Each host takes care of the packaging, etc., and report
back to the master machine which takes care of making CD images
with mkisofs, and pushing them to the web site tree. I assume a
hard drive can simply be partitioned with a partition for the QNX
file-system, and perhaps a swap partition, and the machine be set
to boot from that device? Also, what kind of network devices does
QNX support well (besides disk, RAM, and CPU, the build hosts generally
just need good Ethernet)?
-- Shaw Terwilliger
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon Dec 20 1999 - 10:59:01 CST