Subject: Re: Cross-building Debian packages

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 01:00:10 +0000 (GMT)

Philip Blundell writes:
> ARM.  I'm not sure that I shall though, bearing in mind that I'm not
> entirely sure I want to get entangled with Debian, and I'm rapidly losing
> patience with Linux/ARM in general, given that Russell seems to have
> little or no inclination to send me a copy of his stuff on disk, having
> been prevaricating for a _very_ long time now.

*NOTE* this was written extremely quickly, and without thought.  Hence it is
blunt and to the point.  It may or may not be absolutely correct, and there
may be parts that I regret putting in.  However, this is currently my
situation.

It is not a lack of inclination - it's a lack of time.  I have just changed
jobs, from a frustrating job due to lack of documentation on several companies
parts (which basically meant that it dragged the job out), to a 7 day 10 hr week
job, which does not leave much time to work on Linux.  There is the possibility
of a business trip up to Scotland in around two weeks, and during that time I
will be totally out of touch, AND THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT THIS.  The
source code for the kernel has changed quite a bit since I put the bits on
Phil's Syquest, so that requires updating.

However, if he would like me to write the disk with an as yet untested set of
source code, then I can do that right now and send it to him.

I am devoting all *NON WORKING* hours to Linux (9pm - midnight/1am), so I am
doing the best possible, probably at severe risk to my personnal health to keep
this project going.

I am sure that you can see that I am (and have been) under considerable
pressure recently.  Maybe I ought to totally drop the idea of ARM Linux then?
Maybe I don't have the time to continue it?  Maybe not.

Maybe in a month's time or so, I'll be able to reduce the hours that I'm
currently working.

Plus, I am getting mails from people trying to download the new kernels that
appear to be on the web site, dispite the fact that the downloading page says
quite clearly that it is in the process of being uploaded.  Maybe this should
be corrected - it will be uploaded when it is ready.  Ok, the directories are
present on the FTP site, but I can assure you that they are empty for now.

Please note that some of the kernel sources have already been combined into
Linus' kernel source tree, and I hope that this can continue.

(I'm sorry Phil - this isn't specifically directed at you - I'm under severe
pressure at the moment, and this is just another thing sitting on my todo
pile.  I will get round to it, I can assure you).

What I may end up doing is releasing a very limited set of known kernels (the
ones that I am running right now), and allowing Philip to upload the compiler
tools such that other people can work on the binaries.  This would be a great
help to the project, since various binaries are becomming quite old now.  At the
same time, this would relieve me of the massive amount of work required to
produce a meaningful distribution.  How about it?

To sum up, I have a very large workload on at the moment that is preventing me
from progressing the kernel and distribution as fast as I would like.  This
workload should reduce in the near future, whereby I hope to get something at
least together.
   _____
  |_____| ------------------------------------------------- ---+---+-
  |   |       Russell King      [email-masked]         --- ---
  | | | | http://whirligig.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~rmk92/home.html  /  /  |
  | +-+-+                                                     --- -+-
  /   |               THE developer of ARM Linux              |+| /|\
 /  | | |      *  who wishes that he was in Hong Kong  *      ---  |
    +-+-+ -------------------------------------------------  /\\\  |

---

From: Philip Blundell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 01:25:48 +0000 (GMT)

> Linus' kernel source tree, and I hope that this can continue.

Incidentally, has there been any movement on the cache-flushing front?

P.