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From: torvalds@cc.helsinki.fi
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: 386 goodies sought
Message-ID: <1991Apr8.125827.5888@cc.helsinki.fi>
Date: 8 Apr 91 12:58:27 GMT
References: <1991Apr7.230652.3535@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 47

In article <1991Apr7.230652.3535@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>, rt2@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Rens Troost) writes:
> 
> I've just gone through upgrading to 386 (thanks, Bruce) and now am looking
> for some new stuff -- if I remember correctly someone had a set of diffs for
> emacs. What is the status of this?
> 
> Also, has anybody gotten bash working for minix? gdb? (this latter must be
> a dream...)
> 
> -Rens
> rt2@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu
> rens@gnu.ai.mit.edu

I'm rather new to 386-Minix myself, but have tried porting some stuff
and have a few comments:

1) Get gcc! Without this your porting will be much more difficult. You
don't even need to do anything, it's been ported already, and binaries
can be found on plains. Great!

2) I dont know about others, but with 386-minix and gcc the system is
close enough to "real" unix that most gnu-programs seem to work without
any major changes. I tried getting a "minix-ported" bash, and had no end
of troubles. Get the real unmodified gnu-sources.

3) gnu tar, gawk and bison are easy - get them, make some small changes,
and you're up and away. Took me a couple of hours to port them, and I
was totally new to the game.

4) Bash is hell :-) It uses ioctl etc that at least vanilla-minix386
doesn't care about (anybody hacked the kernel?), but it's doable. I
ported it yesterday, sort of (you'll need bison), haven't had time to
test it out yet. I have problems with readline, but I think it's a minor
problem. It hasn't bombed on me yet though.

5) If you want emacs, I think there are patches on plains, but I'm not
sure. If uemacs will do (it does for me), get that - it takes no porting
at all (well very little - change some defines in estruct.h, maybe some
very minor other changes). Be sure to get 3.10 (latest version that I'm
aware of), it has &kbg, which allows you to make appropriate macros for
the cursor keys - no need to change the sources. There is a bug in
bind.c (I think),but there are bug-fixes available that seem to clear it
up (if you want it, mail me).

		Happy porting, Linus

Linus Torvalds		torvalds@cc.helsinki.fi