[tlbuild] yet another progress report from Utah: OpenBSD (mostly a success)

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

Martin Schröder writes:

>> could you try on at least [OpenBSD] 5.0? 5.1 has just been released
>> and 4.9 has reached its EOL.

Indeed, OpenBSD 5.1 appeared on 2012.05.01!

Doing an O/S install, and getting hundreds of packages up to date, is
a major job.  The last time that we did this on OpenBSD (4.5 -> 4.9),
many programs in /usr/local/bin were invalidated by the loss of system
shared libaries against which they were linked, and it took me a huge
amount of work to get packages rebuilt.  

Our goal is to try to have a fairly uniform Unix environment across
all major flavors, and that means building from source code, rather
than relying on binary packages.

I just spoke to my colleague here who manages our virtual machine zoo,
and he is downloading the OpenBSD 5.1 images now.  Today is graduation
day on campus, with many activities in progress, so the new VM
probably won't be operational until next week.  My plan is to try to
install enough GNUware from the BSD ports system to allow attempting a
TeX Live build; the /usr/local reconstruction project can then follow
more leisurely.

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- University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
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