as the current BLFS is quite outdated, i propose another approach to get the book up to date.
i guess there are to many outdated packages which are dependencies for others. fixing one package requires to rebuild another bunch of packages where one or another can't be built as it depends on some more packages which themselfs require to update another one... in my humble opinion updating the complete blfs-book is almost impossible. *just start with a new EMPTY branch and RESTART FROM SCRATCH!!* first get the most common libraries (like berkeley-db, jpeg, png ...) up to a current version. next would be x, gnome, kde and the most used servers like apache, samba, ldap... just bare without anything on top of it. and now the packages which some of the authors/contributers use themselfs on top of kde / gnome or as an extension to one of the servers already built. but just step by step. example: just minimal php, no additional packages required which aren't built yet. getting a full blown php requires to much additional packages, but getting a minimal php is quite easy. i guess with this approach we will have a blfs 6.x very quick. not as complete as the current one, but the packages in the "new" book are well tested and fit to each other. whenever i wrote about a successull update of one of these packages (last was berkeley db) i get a similar replay: the package has some more dependencies which are not tested yet, thanks for the info, but no update possible now. i know i might have overseen some issues, but i'm really frustrated as every hint i put back to the community is not applicable due to some reasons which lead to a no-go for my commitment. everytime the arguments are quite reasonable and i can understand my input can't be implemented without any side effects. as i could see during the last months, almost every input from a user was rejected with "thanks for your input, but you didn't test package x, y and z". i myself have updated almost all packages i use from blfs (the few i didn't had no update since the last complete book!!). but i have not the complexity in dependencies as given by the COMPLETE book. when i started with LFS there was no real BLFS but a long list of really usefull hints. now we have a BLFS which is outdated and hints which are outdated too. for me a stipped down BLFS wich is current, and hints which are based on a book (hints should correspond to a given book version!!) would be much more desireable than the current status. i don't want to offend anybody, and i really appreciate the work all the authors are doeing. but the current state of the book is just [censored] thanks for anyone haveing read 'til here!! tobias -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
