Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.erols.net!surfnet.nl!newshost.vu.nl!cs.vu.nl!kjb
From: kjb@cs.vu.nl (Kees J Bot)
Subject: Re: SPARC SIMULATOR; MINIX CD ROM approaching
Nntp-Posting-Host: hornet.cs.vu.nl
References: <DwtHpH.Ky9@cs.vu.nl>
Sender: news@cs.vu.nl
Organization: Fac. Wiskunde & Informatica, VU, Amsterdam
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 14:26:30 GMT
Message-ID: <Dwuqs8.8y1@cs.vu.nl>
Lines: 48

ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes:

>P.S. I am going to burn the MINIX 2.0 CD ROM on 13 September.  If anyone
>has useful stuff to put on it, please prepare each package as two files:
>XXXXXX.TAZ (a compressed tar file) and README.TXT, an ASCII file telling
>what it is and how to install it.  We will provide a generic mechanism to
>get compress tar files (.TAZ) from the CD ROM to the MINIX hard disk and
>de-archive them.  You have to supply the rest, either in the README.TXT file
>or in documentation contained in the tar file.  The README.TXT file should
>give a good idea of what the software does, how to use it generally, where
>the documentation is, and stuff like that.  Detailed user manuals can go in
>the .TAZ file.

A useful "standard" would be if package "foo" is to be placed in
/usr/local/src/foo.  The tar file should be made relative to
/usr/local/src, i.e.

	$ cd /usr/local/src
	$ tar cvf - foo | compress -b13 > FOO.TAZ

(Use -b16 for packages that can only be used in 32-bit mode.)

The Makefile in foo should have the target 'install' to compile and
install foo in /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/man, and optionally
/usr/local/lib.  With 'make clean' one can remove the .o files to save
space, and 'make uninstall' also removes things installed in
/usr/local/{bin,man,lib} to remove foo from Minix entirely.

If I modify 'setup' a bit we can use

	setup /usr

to add floppy sets like USR.TAZ, SYS.TAZ, and CMD.TAZ that are all
relative to /usr.  With

	setup /usr/local/src

one could add contributed software like my example FOO package.

On the CD we could use FOO.TXT and FOO.TAZ as the description and
source.  Then several packages can be put in the same directory.

Comments?  (Please post them for all to see, don't mail them to my
already overflowing mailbox.)
--
long:  http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/minix.html         Kees J. Bot  (kjb@cs.vu.nl)
short: http://www.cs.vu.nl/ftp/minix/README.html        Systems Programmer
ftp:   ftp://ftp.cs.vu.nl/pub/minix/		   Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
