[!CrackMonkey!] NetBStismos

[Miles Nordin]

>>>>> "mmaprosf" == Monkey Master and Prince Regent of San Francisco <monkeymaster at crackmonkey.org> writes:

      mmaprosf> Statically linked binaries sound like a great idea!
      mmaprosf> Let's use some!  We can pretend we're on ULTRIX or
      mmaprosf> something!!

or QNX.

NetBSD 1.6 have statically-linked binaries in /bin and /sbin.  We like
it this way.  You don't have to do ridiculous finger-crossing
atomic-mv dances to update /libexec/ld.elf_so without breaking your
dynamically-linked /sbin/init.  then boot from a ``rescue floppy.''
I've heard of booting a tape, but what's a floppy, anyway---is that
like some kind of unusually short and flat magtape?  ``boot floppy,''
ha ha.

NetBSD-current however has broken this tradition with entirely
Linuxified dynamically-linked binaries (for the sake of i18n and other
shared-object switches like FPUless libm), but every /bin and /sbin
programs is still duplicated under /rescue in the form of a single
gigantic statically-linked binary that chooses its character by
looking at argv[0].  This binary built automatically from the same
source files as the regular versions of the programs, by 'crunchide',
another very old NetBSD tool once used only for making install disks.

AFAIK NetBSD/sh{3,4,5}, for Sega game console ``Dreamcast'' and a few
discontinued hpcs, is still entirely statically-linked.  There is no
shlib support in the GNU toolchain and BSD libraries on this port.

Some of these ports are supported by just one guy, who has some ideas
how to do dl but hasn't bothered yet.  Then there's Jason Thorpe, a
sort of schitzophrenic Tasmanian Devil who burps out a new device
driver after breakfast every morning.  That there's often only one
serious guy on a port makes it kind of amazing that they bit-rot so
slowly that they're mostly-working most of the time, and always
working at every formal release.  This is what we mean by ``clean
code,'' and Linux still doesn't begin to touch it.  It's right up
there with EnTee on pretending to support notPeeCees, then flopping
embarassingly giving up, telling you to buy a PeeCee instead because
``oh the Alpha is obsolete now anyway.''  

APOLOGISTS!  ENABLERS!

when really it's because of these pasty incompetent hothead undergrads
breaking things, glueing on their ``network block devices'' with
drippy urethane foam, then going out to get smashed and brag about
wnat studly ``kernel hackers'' they are.

ha ha glibc.  Why would anyone Debianize all these real Unixes after
seeing The GAR System?  Rather I would use NetBSD's zoularis system to
run NetBSD's pkgsrc on Solaris, HPUX, or Darwin.  NetBSD is always
giving Usenix talks and such about their package system.  Talk of
replacing it is the worst case of lazy-MCSE dont-want-to-learn-shit
and rabid-activistmo NIH I've heard in a long time.

The thing that sucks about NetBSD is that they *still* don't have a
decent Posix thread library---just a lot of talk and dead CVS
branches.  It's a real embarassment.

-- 
Le fascisme est la dictature ouverte de la bourgeoisie.
		-- Georg Dimitrov