Future LFS 7.x Plans

[Jeremy Huntwork]

Jim Gifford wrote:
> It seems now that LFS is ready to go into the world that CLFS has been 
> in for a while. There seems to be a lot of discussions, that are going 
> to be a duplication of work, and no one from LFS reaching out to the 
> CLFS team for input on what issues we have seen and what you will cross. 
> It was proposed a while  back to make CLFS the LFS 7, which got 
> rejected, but someone else brings it up something similar, now it's a 
> great idea let's get it done.

It was a matter of timing, and I think, the fact that LFS can only take 
little bits of changes at a time. I think to a lot of people, turning 
CLFS into LFS 7.0 seemed like a large pill to swallow all at once. (I'm 
not necessarily voicing my own opinions here, just what I believe is the 
cause for what happened).

Plus, there is a large difference still with CLFS vs LFS. One of your 
aims is true cross compiling, being able to start from any arch and 
build for any arch. LFS still is, and from what I can tell, will always 
be a strictly native build.

> If LFS wants to support multiple architectures, I would recommend only 
> supporting x86, x86_64, and powerpc. The others are just too complicated.

You're probably right. In fact, I'm not even certain that PowerPC will 
officially make it in.

> I also hope anything from what people have done towards the LFS's 7.0 
> goal, that the appropriate credit is giving.

Of course. When I first started looking at adding in 64-bit support to 
LFS I did look at CLFS and I used some commands and principles, and a 
patch found there. Here are the initial two commits to the x86_64 branch 
which started all this:
http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/changeset/8229/branches/x86_64/BOOK
http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/changeset/8232/branches/x86_64/BOOK

Admittedly, I was amiss in not giving credit to CLFS at that point, 
during those couple of commits. It did not seem like a big deal at the 
time, since we were sister projects and I had worked on CLFS myself.

Shortly after that, Greg Schafer started advising me on the method. 
Threads to that effect start here:
http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/lfs-dev/2007-July/059715.html
and here:
http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/lfs-dev/2007-July/059744.html

And there are more if you dig around. After Greg started advising me, 
the build method started changing. On only the third commit to the 
x86_64 branch, stuff from CLFS started being removed:
http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/changeset/8241/branches/x86_64/BOOK

Since then, any borrowed ideas have come from DIY and Greg Schafer, 
which is why, when I merged all these changes into trunk from the jh 
branch (the successor of the x86_64 branch) I gave him credit and 
thanks. I have not really looked at CLFS in a long time, but to my 
knowledge, there isn't anything left in LFS that originated in CLFS.

Even so, if you feel it is appropriate, I will gladly drop in a line in 
the changelog that expressly thanks CLFS for building pure 64-bit and 
64-bit multilib first and for initially setting us on the path.

--
JH