Re: So how do we get this going

[Richard M. Stallman]

    OK, now we have a savannah project, how do we get rolling?  What do we
    need?  I still don't see how we are going to release jack without
    pounding on upstream for things like the >2Gb ext2fs patch, etc.

That's right.  Until these problems in the Hurd are fixed, we can't
release a version useful GNU system.  The idea here is to develop
a suitable GNU packaging system in parallel with the necessary work
on the Hurd.

It could be that we won't really use this work until the Hurd
is running well on L4.  But that's ok--there is a lot of work
to be done here, so it is good that there is no super rush.

    Installer:

    1. We need one.
    2. Should (can?) it be native?
    3. Can we take advantage of what Ben has done with the liveCD stuff or
    is that too Debian specific?
    4. Do we need tmpfs fixed before anything?

I would guess that this work can be done starting now
in parallel with further Hurd development.

    1. Do we have anything with regards to Filesystem Heirarcy Standards?

Let's compatible with it except when we have a reason to do something
different.  (That's the general GNU policy towards all standards.)

    2. Are we dumping /usr?

(By "dumping" do you mean "eliminating"?)  I don't think so.  Why
would we do that?

    3. What init system (does that even make sense?)

I presume we will still need demons, since nobody has proposed any
better idea to replace them.  Therefore we still need a system to stop
and start them.

I believe there is a GNU package that provides a convenient interface
to starting and stopping demons, implemented on top of the init.d and
rc.N directories.  We could provide a new "native" implementation of
that package.  However, it might be useful to provide a special "rc.2"
directory translator, simply so that packages that are designed to
install some file into rc.2 will still work.