Re: [vox-tech] compiling kernel's in debian?

[Peter Jay Salzman <p@dMAPSirac.org>]

On Fri 09 Mar 01, 11:16 AM, Mytho X said: 
> Hi,
> 
> Sorry I have not replied sooner work has had me swamped during the day 
> and at night.  libncurses (I put this at the begining on purpose) did 
> the trick (thank you Peter).
 
cool.  it /should/ be put into the debian faq; the question pops up from
time to time on the debian-user mailinglist.

come to think of, maybe i'll send a bug report to debian.  libncurses5-dev
should be recommended by the kernel-source package.   currently, the package
description says that you need libncurses-dev, but someone installing via
apt-get won't see this (you'll see it on dselect or capt).  a recommendation
is different from listing the package requirement in the description of
kernel-source*.

henry, what do you think?  am i being too nitpicky?


> Yes, this did the trick.  When I was searching for ncurses5-dev I saw 
> libncurses5-dev and did not associate it with what I was looking for. 

it's definitely misleading.  the ncurses package itself only provides
terminfo data.  the dev package provides the header files and static libs.

i guess in an anal sort of way, that's the way it should be, even though it
invites confusion.  that's one of the things i like about debian.  even
though at times it causes mass-confusion, when you finally know what the
answer is, it really does make a lot of sense.

makes it harder for the debian-newbie, but makes it waaaaay easier for
people more experienced with debian.

distros like redhat and mandrake are kind of the opposite with all their
non-standard config files and interfaces.  net-cfg is the best interfaces
i've ever seen, but when you're having trouble, it's nice to know exactly
what's going on behind-the-scenes.

and FORGET the boot up sequence for mandrake 7.2 and corel.  nice eye-candy,
but i saw mike simons struggle with the corel bootup for almost 3 hours.

pete