RFC: Better portability for package maintainers

[Alex Ross]

The following is based on premises that portability is good and
that POSIX is a standard. A proposal.

Over the last couple months we've built about gazillion Ubuntu/Dapper
packages. The process is heavily automated ([1], [2], [3]).

And so, to lookup the result of the XYZ build (where XYZ is a source package
in question), simply click on a link that looks like this:

http://www.gnusolaris.org/cgi-bin/hackzone-web?pkgname=XYZ

For instance, take two randomly selected packages: galeon [4] and
fam [5]. The first line in [4] has "SUCCESS" in it, which means that there
is no need to look any further. The fam's build log at [5] starts with
"BUILD-FAIL", and for those who are interested, the exact failure reason is in
there way down below. To find out package version search the corresponding
build log for "source version".

Fixing failed builds is also simple, in most cases. In the grand scheme of
things the suggested quick check could be one incremental step to ultimately
achieve a unified common-source OSS that *builds and runs on all Debian systems*.

[1] http://www.gnusolaris.org
[2] http://www.gnusolaris.org/archive/elatte-unstable/newpkg_main
[3] http://www.gnusolaris.org/cgi-bin/hackzone-web
[4] http://www.gnusolaris.org/cgi-bin/hackzone-web?pkgname=galeon
[5] http://www.gnusolaris.org/cgi-bin/hackzone-web?pkgname=fam
[6] http://www.gnusolaris.org/download

Thanks!

-- 
Alex