I don't mean to sound discouraging or anything, but does the world really need
a CDE linux distro? Would you be able to maintain such a custom distro? My
primary goal in contributing to the project is to get CDE available in the
debian repos and lay the groundwork for the other distros to package it into
their repos, thus making the need for a custom distro with CDE preinstalled
redundant. That also seems like a lot of work, I would much rather see DtMail
fixed up than you splitting your free time between that and an entire distro. I
would however also like to advise against a rewrite if possible for DtMail, as
this is a historical project somewhat, I would like to see if we can
use/improve it in any way first before we just discard it.
As for my autotools progress, I am about 80% done with the base Makefiles, I am
going to test the build once I have one to one parity with our Imake build. On
this issue, Once I have the linux version of the autotool build finished, I
would like to upload it to a separate branch for the community to test, as I do
not think that I would do justice testing it in VMs for operating systems other
than linux, as I am not familiar with them. Ulrich, if you are reading, I think
you should commit your experimental OSX code before I make the commit (should
still be a month or two down the pipeline, but I'm pretty sure another dramatic
shift in the code would require a rewrite). I also definitely know AIX and HPUX
builds will be broken with this, but maybe David Cantrell could help getting
hands on the former now that he's joined the dark side of big blue :) (too
soon?). There's also a guy who seem to be running AIX on his pinebook with CDE
built, I think he's posted to the discussions but I can't be sure.
I would very much like to see a new ksh in our build. I know Marcin Ciezlak
(sorry if I butchered that) said he would look into it, and even stepped in to
maintain ast-ksh on freebsd, but I'm sure that alone probably opened up a can
of worms for him. They use meson, and I could see that being a problem (maybe
CMake can integrate ninja and make files together? I am not going to do the
research on this or contribute to such an effort anyhow, I have already learnt
automake and such, and keeping make compatibility seems like the right choice).
Thank you for your time,
-Chase
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Thursday, February 21, 2019 5:27 AM, Danilo Pecher
<danilo.pec...@data-experts.biz> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Thanks for the replies.
>
> I was expecting calls to bring back CDEbian, but I'm somewhat torn on that,
> since Debian, like far too many distros has gone to the dark side and
> switched to systemd, which turns a perfectly servicable Linux into Windows 9
> Linux OS, so it's either a fork from debian or going the full mile and make a
> distro based on LFS, which also has the added bonus of being tailor made for
> the architecture.
>
> I have a test rig with a Ryzen 5 2500U octo-core, which has both Ubuntu 18.04
> and my current nightly build of "CDELfs" on it. Ubuntu doesn't even boot
> without deactivating half the processor's features by kernel command line.
> The LFS instead takes about 4 hours to compile and install, which is
> certainly a point to be made in its disfavour, but it boots cleanly and in
> comparison to the generic code in the Ubuntu install, the optimized LFS
> binaries are almost comically fast. for instance the build times for CDE:
>
> On Ubuntu 18.04: 6 minutes, 34 seconds
> On LFS: 2 minutes, 16 seconds.
>
> So I'm leaning towards LFS, but the lack of a package manager is a a severe
> drawback. Currently I'm evaluating two possible candidates : pkgsrc and
> portage-index, which might mitigate that.
>
> dtmail will most certainly get a hefty refresh, but it will have to be a
> rewrite, as I know of no halfway up-to-date motif based email client that one
> could start with. In a first step I'm planning on a plain-text only version
> as I also don't know of any halfway decent motif-based web engine and
> introducing masses of gome or kde dependencies would beat the purpose of CDE.
>
> Cheers,
> Hippo
>
> On Wed, 2019-02-20 at 23:27 -0600, Matthew R. Trower wrote:
>
>>> Additionally, ninja or meson would severely restrict platform
>>> support. CMake could be alright.
>>>
>>> It would be great to see DtMail given new life.
>>>
>>> -mrt
>>>
>>> From: Christopher Turkel
>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2019 20:50
>>> To: CDE development
>>> Subject: Re: [cdesktopenv-devel] Back in the flock
>>>
>>> Bring back CDEbian, that would be great!
>>>
>>> CDE still builds on OpenBSD just fine, since that's what I use these
>>> days.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 9:47 PM Jon Trulson <j...@radscan.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> > On 2/20/19 1:53 PM, Danilo Pecher wrote:
>>>> > > Hi everybody,
>>>> > >
>>>> > > I've been away for quite a while from CDE related work, so long
>>>> > in fact,
>>>> > > I don't even have the same name anymore. Back then I was going by
>>>> > the
>>>> > > name of Danilo Schöneberg, now I'm Danilo Pecher. The reason for
>>>> > that is
>>>> > > simple: I got married at the tender young age of 44.
>>>> > >
>>>> >
>>>> > Congratulations! :)
>>>> >
>>>> > > Now that I'm getting back to contributing, I've got a few things
>>>> > in mind
>>>> > > to work on in the near future, and would like some input from
>>>> > others:
>>>> > >
>>>> > > 1. One of the first things I'll be doing is streamlining the
>>>> > build
>>>> > > instruction pages. They've become cluttered a bit and I want to
>>>> > test if
>>>> > > some of them are still working. Especially NetBSD is a bit of a
>>>> > tricky
>>>> > > patient here. On 7.2 everything works and on 8.0 half the stuff
>>>> > is
>>>> > > broken. Some work to do there. For most systems I'll probably
>>>> > provide
>>>> > > automated build-scripts.
>>>> > >
>>>> >
>>>> > Quite possible - I've only been testing with FreeBSD 11 in addition
>>>> > to
>>>> > the Ubuntus.
>>>> >
>>>> > > 2. Although I've been rather inactive on the project itself, I've
>>>> > not
>>>> > > been completely idle. I'm about 75% done in creating a CDE-based
>>>> > Linux
>>>> > > distro based on LFS, complete with automated build. What do
>>>> > people
>>>> > > think? Would there be a "market" for that?
>>>> > >
>>>> >
>>>> > Linux From Scratch? Probably... I've heard several people wanting
>>>> > the
>>>> > CDEbian distro to be resurrected/maintained, so I assume there are
>>>> > those
>>>> > what would love a one-stop solution.
>>>> >
>>>> > > 3. Point 2 sort of exposes that we've got a massive problem in
>>>> > terms of
>>>> > > applications. Except for editors (both VIM and Emacs come with
>>>> > Motif
>>>> > > GUIs and integrate nicely) we've got close to no apps that really
>>>> > > integrate seamlessly. Well, we can probably agree that there'll
>>>> > never be
>>>> > > a dtwww web browser, unless someone wants to take leave of
>>>> > his/her
>>>> > > social life to write a motif based web engine, but I think we
>>>> > should be
>>>> > > able to modernize dtmail and ship in a slightly more versatile
>>>> > default
>>>> > > text editor (you may take that as me volunteering)
>>>> > >
>>>> >
>>>> > Yay :) I think dtmail needs to be fixed, or removed. It doesn't
>>>> > support a lot of things a modern mailer would, like for example
>>>> > SSL/TLS :)
>>>> >
>>>> > Making dtpad a more modern and useful editor would also be cool.
>>>> >
>>>> > > 4. I know work is going on for an autotools conversion. In that
>>>> > regard,
>>>> > > I'd like to ask if we aren't going to end up being Betamax-man
>>>> > again. At
>>>> > > least by the look of it, cmake/ninja/meson seem to be taking over
>>>> > in a
>>>> > > growing number of projects. While we're at that, I'm going to set
>>>> > the
>>>> > > cat among the pidgeons a bit. Would it not be a better idea to
>>>> > make a
>>>> > > hard break with the current (chaotic and nigh-on impossible to
>>>> > > comprehend) build system and switch to a clean-sheet rebuild for
>>>> > a 3.x
>>>> > > release?
>>>> >
>>>> > I think autotools will be around for awhile (Hows that going
>>>> > Chase?).
>>>> > But I have been thinking CMake might be nice too. That one seems
>>>> > to be
>>>> > getting more and more popular, and it can generate ninja files
>>>> > too. It
>>>> > also has the benefit of maturity and wide spread adoption.
>>>> >
>>>> > I might spend some time looking into that when I get some time.
>>>> >
>>>> > I think meson is too young at present -- though I've never tried
>>>> > it. I
>>>> > have done CMake though, and I do like it. autotools m4 makes my
>>>> > brain
>>>> > hurt :)
>>>> >
>>>> > > Perhaps, if we do that, we might also get a chance of getting rid
>>>> > of
>>>> > > the ksh-dependency for dtterm. That's been giving me rabies
>>>> > since
>>>> > > 2016. ast-ksh seems to be all but unmaintained. and that's the
>>>> > only
>>>> > > suitable candidate on a variety of platforms (BSD mainly, but
>>>> > also
>>>> > > LFS, slackware and serveral other Linux variants on which it only
>>>> > > builds on a sunny day with less than 3 knots of wind)>
>>>> >
>>>> > Well, I wasn't aware that dtterm depended on ksh - that we should
>>>> > be
>>>> > able to get rid of I would think.
>>>> >
>>>> > I do know that building CDE's dtksh/ksh requires an already working
>>>> > ksh
>>>> > install (sigh).
>>>> >
>>>> > But att-ksh is actively being maintained here:
>>>> >
>>>> > https://github.com/att/ast
>>>> >
>>>> > I'm "following" them in git-speak. They have removed a great deal
>>>> > of
>>>> > cruft, fixed many bugs, and are only maintaining the parts of AST
>>>> > that
>>>> > ksh actually depends on. Check the commit history...
>>>> >
>>>> > I'd love to dump our version and use that one someday. It also has
>>>> > the
>>>> > benefit of not requiring ksh to... build ksh. :)
>>>> >
>>>> > > Okay, so much for now, I'll start firing up my test boxes to see
>>>> > which
>>>> > > systems we correctly build on. Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04 and 18.04
>>>> > > successfully checked out today.
>>>> > >
>>>> >
>>>> > Welcome back!
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>> > cdesktopenv-devel mailing list
>>>> > cdesktopenv-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
>>>> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cdesktopenv-devel
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