Re: Noob testing on Win32....

["Nick Fisher" <Nick nickdafish com>]

> > > > Hummmm.....
> > > > I'm afraid I use Gentoo (Not Debian) and I don't use X.
> > > you dont need x to help test compile, that is the great thing.
> > > It could even be automated.
> > Except I'm going to be missing stacks of libs.... no?
> Probably
I smell an upcomming 'new' gentoo machine with X and Gnome....
One advantage to this down turn in the ecomomy is that I now have 
serveral 'spare' desktop machines!

> > > Ahh, can you try installing the debian source packages under
> gentoo?
> > > there must be way to convert, I will look into that.
> > Havn't a clue. I think their quite different, Gentoo uses BSD style
> ports
> > called ebuilds rather than packages. Maybe I can install the debian
> i thought it was called 'portage' but anyway
The system is called Portage but the 'packages' are called ebuilds.
ebuilds are bash (I think) scripts that use the commands provided by 
Portage and are generally run using Portage command 'emerge'.

> > package manager but everything is probbaly going to be in the wrong
> > places. Gentoo is conforms to FSH 1.1 but not your standard RedHat
> SystemV
> > stuff.
> If you could find where it breaks and help to figure out what changes
> would be need to be made to the makefiles to get it to compile on
> Gentoo.
I've always wanted to figure out the details of writing ebuilds on Gentoo 
but I was going to try and start with some thing simpler...

> > > > Sorry. Is there any straight up Win32 testing I can help with?
> > > Maybe you can alien out the exes and libs for testing?
> Alien is a program for converting between package formats (and as such
> extracting binaries from non native packages). 
Ahhh.....

> Google for Alien and
> RPM
> or package should turn up something, the homepage for Alien might be on
> sourceforge but i forget and i dont have time to check right now.
I did that.... that's how I knew sorta what it is. I have since found the 
home page.... (The RPM in the search did the trick)
http://www.kitenet.net/programs/alien/

> I empathise with your situation.
> 
> Providing binaries makes testing easier for everyone, i almost never
> compile anything. 
I use Gentoo and hence compile everything. I don't suppose it makes that 
much difference but it gives me warm fuzzy feelings knowing all my 
binarys are optimised for my arch.

> Other projects keep the version in CVS so that
> it can always be easily built and some have regular automated
> builds every day.  It is all about lowering the barrier to entry
> and making it as easy as possible for those who are willing to help
> to get involved.  It is hard to convince developers that the work
> required
> to build infrastructure and community is worth it in the longer run,
> and
> frankly it is not as interesting work.
Sorta like documentation ;)

> > I was trained as a C coder many moons ago on a BSD system and I'm a
> > NT/Win2k MCSE. My Unix admin skills are purely from my spare time
> goofing
> getting Dia to compile cleaning on various platforms would be very
> useful
> work.
Just to make this clear I'm not stepping forward for Win32 compile 
testing. Generally I only script on Win32 with the odd dose of VB when it 
can't be helped. Maybe further down the road....

> if you are looking for suggestions perhaps you might grab 'valgrind'
> (similar in function to Rational Purify) and hunt down memory leaks.
> 
> > off. I recon I can put a few hours a week into a bit of Dia testing
> but
> > you may have to give me links and help on the tools I've not used
> before
> 
> ill provide links tomorrow if you want, but not now 28k dialup sucks
> rocks.
28k... oh dear. May I suggest some thing faster? Perhaps something based 
on RFC1149 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt)? :)

  Nick