pkgsrc on IRIX

Roland Illig

Why should you use IRIX?

• Honestly, I have no idea.
• Just for fun? Maybe.
• To try out their C and C++ compilers? Maybe.
• To test whether pkgsrc works in weird environments? Definitely.

What's so weird about IRIX?

• The command line length is limited to 20 kB.
• No ksh, cvs, screen, mc, zsh, bzip2, bash.
• System tools (awk, sed) have low line length limits.

But ... the compiler (MIPSpro) is nice.

• Very useful wording of the diagnostics.
• Many enhanced warnings and remarks.
• The GNU extensions to C and C++ are not implemented.
• Good code? — I don't know, never tried.

Is pkgsrc on IRIX usable?

• Bootstrapping pkgsrc took some time and effort.
• Installing the first few packages took even more time.
• All usable tools were missing.
• First bulk build (heavily tweaked) succeeded with 2494 packages.
• x11/gtk2 and x11/qt3-libs failed because of the command line length limit (difficult to fix).

See also

• http://wiki.netbsd.se/index.php/How_to_use_pkgsrc_on_IRIX