DSL Tips and Tricks :: easier way to compile stuff for DSL



Before reading this, please be aware that I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but simply that there are better alternatives, in my opinion.
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DSL is great but has a drawback : it s a modified debian. Some debian package won't install through apt-get because DSL has not the proper debian dependency structure. This make compile stuff for DSL a real problem. There are often missing libs you can't add because of dependencies issues.

I don't consider the inability to install debian packages a drawback, but I guess that's a matter of opinion. Compiling software, however, has little to do with your package management system, and depending on libs that are provided by such a method is actually less reliable, when compiling new software, than having no package management at all.
I used to disagree with this when others told me the same thing, because I hadn't had any trouble. Over the years, though, I saw increasing problems with mixing a binary package manager with source on the same system, and today I try to avoid package managers as much as possible.

The "missing libs you can't add" problem is an inadequacy of package management (and by the fact that DSL is increasingly incompatible with Debian). These libs are intended to be used with binary programs obtained from the same repositories as the libs, and not necessarily sufficient for compiling programs. You can compile the necessary libraries you need if binary versions are incompatible with your desired application.

Relying on another distribution, such as Debian proper, for compiling applications for DSL will probably work ok in most cases, but anytime you do this you run the risk of building programs that are incompatible with DSL if your build system does not have the same or similar versions of libs and headers that were used to build the fundamental parts of DSL. I used to build myDSL packages on an old Suse box, and most worked ok in DSL. However, newer distributions have newer libs and headers (and kernels), many of which create binaries that don't work in DSL without having to include redundant libraries. Because of this, it's my belief that using DSL itself to compile programs intended for DSL is usually going to be more reliable than using Debian.
I don't know, having a full woody development environment available in this or the standard way for compiling from source might come in handy.

There are some things that don't seem to compile on dsl no matter what you do .. determining what's missing is not always easy unless ./configure screams it at you or the compile bombs out at something obvious.  It can be very trying.

I recall for eg that gtk-gnutella compiled on woody, but not on dsl.

Which version of SuSE were you using to compile?  I seem to recall that Slackware10 had a 2.4.26 kernel for a while.

The critical thing is the glibc version.  If that's newer than dsl's, then there are problems on dsl with the compiled binaries.
I'm interested to see what RS has up his sleeve for 4.0. He's hinted that he's ready to move on. He's good at surprising people with innovative ideas so I'll try to be patient and see what he has up his sleeve. Maybe whatever it is, can help with the burden of compiling apps against DSL. If I could get some more up to date apps running in DSL it would sure tweak my interests again.
One issue I came upon whilst messing around with the debootstrap woody install is that linux-kernel-headers does not exist in woody - there are kernel-headers packages but the most up to date is 2.4.20.

The Debian site does not list any dependencies for the linux-kernel-headers package in oldstable, but when I try to install it with apt-get, it prompts to update libc6 and a couple of other packages - unless I'm missing something, this sort of negates the idea of the debootstrap in the first place?
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If I could get some more up to date apps running in DSL it would sure tweak my interests again.


Good to see you're still out there Clivesay!

What apps are you particularly desirous of obtaining on dsl, so to speak?
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