[Call for testers] "BSD ar"

[Bernd Walter]

On Sat, Jan 12, 2008 at 08:21:38AM +0100, Kai Wang wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 11, 2008 at 11:40:36AM -0800, Steve Kargl wrote:
> > Do I drop the ar/ directory into src/usr.bin as a replacement
> > for the current ar/?
> 
> Then make buildworld?
> This will possibly not work because you may need to turn off
> the build of GNU ar first, which is not simple because the build of other
> GNU tools may depend on the build of GNU ar. (I'm working on this)
> 
> The recommended way is: (for now)
> 
> 1. Backup your GNU ar first:
>   % cp /usr/bin/ar SOME_BACKUP_DIR
> 
> 2. Build BSD ar
>   extract the tarball
>   % cd ar
>   % make
> 
> 3. Replace
>   # cp ./ar /usr/bin/ar
>   # cd /usr/bin
>   # ln -f ar ranlib
> 
> Then you can do something like ports build or "make buildworld"
> to try it out.

But then it is only used for building the toolchain, not for building
the world/universe itself.
Did you try adding it into the toolchain for your make universe tests?
I don't know how sensitive ar is to cross builds, but of course it is
important for us to support cross builds.
Nevertheless I think it is great to have a replacement.
We have a lot of additional traditional tools under the BSD licence
and I feel more and more comfortable with this.

-- 
B.Walter                http://www.bwct.de      http://www.fizon.de
bernd at bwct.de           info at bwct.de            support at fizon.de