Nekodeps

Script generator and downloading hints

• How to obtain wget, which we use for installations?
  To bootstrap the system, to obtain the necessary packages to run Nekodeps-generated scripts, download wget-bootstrap.tar.gz (or wget-bootstrap.tar if you don't have gzip). Then unpack the archive and run sh ./install.sh. That will install wget, and then you can move on the usual way.
• How to avoid downloading what you already have?
  Always run the download script while in your tardist directory of choice. Since wget uses -c (continue) option when downloading, already downloaded files will be recognized and skipped.
• I run sh ./script and packages are downloaded, but when I type "go" in 'inst' prompt, it tells me about missing dependencies!?
  Sometimes, somehow, inst does not open all .tardist distributions properly, even if the script properly downloaded and specified them on the inst command line. The quick solution is to choose a temporary directory, such as /tmp/dist and manually unpack all reported missing tardists (but which the script did download, remember!) in there by doing cd /tmp/dist; tar vxf /nekoware/neko_PKGNAME.tardist for each package. In inst prompt, you then type from /tmp/dist and when the packages are read in, continue the process by typing "go". It'll work. Later you can delete /tmp/dist/. (Great thing about this approach is that you don't cancel the inst session you've already started, so you're not wasting time again on re-opening all of the tardist packages).

• How does the script work? Where does it get the dependency information?
  It reads the dependency list from descript.ion, file generated by parsing .tardist packages. Officially, descript.ion is generated by a script named "md5.scr" and is found on all Nekoware mirrors along with the packages.
• What are Descript.ion-fix and "Better md5.scr"?
  Original md5.scr isn't very good, it's slow and more important - contains errors in the output. So when we are converting descript.ion to database format for use with Nekodeps, we apply Descript.ion-fix to fix some of the problems in the file. In an ideal scenario however, the whole Nekoware archive would be downloaded locally, and then SPINLOCK's "Better md5.scr" would be ran to create a proper descript.ion file.
• Why isn't the "Better md5.scr" used officially?
  Nekoware "establishment" showed total lack of interest in it.

• How good is Nekoware?
  It's quite good, the packaging team is working well, and just a few programs from Nekoware can completely change your Irix experience for the better.
  Still, I don't like the way in which Irix .tardist files are put together. One problem with it are enormously-sized packages that you have to download. For example, GCC is about 320 MB as a Nekoware .tardist package, and about 3 MB as a Debian GNU package.
• Any other Free Software collections besides Nekoware?
  Yes, kind of. Stuart Shelton made great progress with enabling Gentoo's Portage-prefix to work on Irix out of the box, and using the native MIPSPro compiler. Bugzilla Irix tracker is here.