SGI: Development

Still working on my pet project, IRIX 5.3-XFS for Durn Near Everything, and since there have been some inquiries I thought I'd give an update.

The project now has a code name! Progress!! It's "Hedera" - a cheap ripoff of the code name for IRIX 6.5 (Kudzu). I figured that the objective was the same (a system that would run on pretty much everything from the time period), so why not.

Second: I'm still wrestling with several supposed "IRIX 5.3" patches for IMPACT graphics that don't seem to work with any version of 5.3 that was ever released. At this point they're probably going to be left out.

Third: I'm strongly considering some sort of revision control. I know it sounds somewhat silly for a single-person project, but I'm getting tired of having to start over from the beginning with packages, especially given some of the IRIX packaging utilities' penchant for zeroing out my IDB files now and then . What systems have people used successfully with IRIX? I've never had to get involved with these before, but since XFS isn't a versioning file system I'm having problems.

On the plus side this gives me the opportunity to move things over to the O300 for speedier packaging. The patience of the software teams at SGI astounds me - I'd have gone on strike for them to rewrite gendist and swpkg to use more than one CPU if I'd have been packaging IRIX in the R3000/R4000 days.

Binary revision control is a tough nut to crack...

The patience of the software teams at SGI astounds me - I'd have gone on strike for them to rewrite gendist and swpkg to use more than one CPU if I'd have been packaging IRIX in the R3000/R4000 days.

Emblematic of the time; I remember Jamie Zawinski said there was time to take a nap while waiting for Netscape 0.93 to compile in 1994...

SAQ wrote: Third: I'm strongly considering some sort of revision control. I know it sounds somewhat silly for a single-person project, but I'm getting tired of having to start over from the beginning with packages, especially given some of the IRIX packaging utilities' penchant for zeroing out my IDB files now and then . What systems have people used successfully with IRIX? I've never had to get involved with these before, but since XFS isn't a versioning file system I'm having problems.

I use version control for all my single person projects, and the ones I don't use it for, I probably should be using it anyway.

I've used cvs and git on irix, but I suspect that the best option is svn (I say that presuming that you are dealing with moderately large binary files).

I use git on irix. With a well-configured .gitignore file, you might be fine with versioning files. Iirc, idb is text anyway

The other thing I've started considering would be maybe exporting the files over NFS from an OpenVMS box.

It would get the job done (ODS-2/5) is versioning, and also the supreme geekiness of it all has begun to appeal to me.

jdboyd wrote:

SAQ wrote: Third: I'm strongly considering some sort of revision control. I know it sounds somewhat silly for a single-person project, but I'm getting tired of having to start over from the beginning with packages, especially given some of the IRIX packaging utilities' penchant for zeroing out my IDB files now and then . What systems have people used successfully with IRIX? I've never had to get involved with these before, but since XFS isn't a versioning file system I'm having problems.

I use version control for all my single person projects, and the ones I don't use it for, I probably should be using it anyway.

I've used cvs and git on irix, but I suspect that the best option is svn (I say that presuming that you are dealing with moderately large binary files).

I will second SVN, been using it daily at work and for my personnel use for the last 6 years.