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Date:	Sat, 08 Dec 2001 21:59:39 +0200
From:	"Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
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To:	sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu
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Subject:	Re: DJGPP 2.03 update
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> From: sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu (Charles Sandmann)
> Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2001 13:15:23 -0600 (CST)
> 
> This brings up a good point - some level of testing/qualification of the
> packages that are already out on Simtel - if they work or not.  The only
> other alternative I see is to rebuild and replace every package ;-(

I don't see any problem with rebuilding all of them.  That could be
done by someone else, not by you, Charles.  Rebuilding any DJGPP port
should be a snap, and it usually is (based on reports by other
people, not from my experience).  If there are problems, they are
usually easy to solve; see the example of Groff 1.16 just today (and
I expect that to be one of the ``hard'' problems).

> In my quick experience - I found that programs which nest more than 3 levels
> and those who rename to an existing file were very frustrating to use.  
> With a handful of updated executables however, I was able to use a stock
> 2.03 distribution without too many problems.  This gives me the hope that
> maybe 80% of the distributions work without too many problems ...

I don't like the ``almost works'' flavor here ;-)  Why should we
continue to live with the doubt (``does that W2K user have problems
because he uses an XYZZY package built with stock v2.03, or is there
something else?''), given that rebuilding is so easy?

Anyway, the list of packages that absolutely _need_ to be rebuilt
(because they either nest, or rename files, or have some other grave
problem solved by the updated djdev) is quite long:

  Binutils, Bash, CVS, Diffutils, Emacs, Fileutils,
  GCC, GDB, Groff, Gawk, GZip, Ispell, Less, Make,
  TeX/Web2c, RHIDE, man

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