Baslinux mailing list

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James Miller wrote:
>
> at the time I composed my BL add-ons page, I thought the 
> main page for BL1 was located at the address in Poland 

That was the address that Chris was using for BL1.

> that now gives the page not found error.  

Now that he has withdrawn, the BL1 site reverts back to the
old address.

> So, I was asking if I need to update the BL1 link on my page 
> to no longer point at the address in Poland, 

Yes.  

> isn't it true in principle that applications could still be 
> written that use libc5 

Yes.  Or they could compiled statically.

> and BL1-friendly components that would have much the same 
> functionality as applications written for subsequent libraries/
> components?  

In general, yes.  However, up-to-date binaries almost always
require glibc2, and even the source code sometimes uses functions
not available in libc5.

> In that respect, isn't the problem with BL1 maintenance/deployment 
> as much one of lack of attention by programmers as it is a lack of 
> capabilities in the software itself?

The biggest problem is one of availability and choice.  With BL2
users have plenty of options for add-on software.  Most binaries
will run and those that don't will usually compile just fine from
source.  However, with BL1 the onus is much more on the maintainer 
to provide lib5 binaries (because they cannot be obtained from
other places).  As you may have noticed, when I was doing BL1, I
provided several add-on packages.  I have not done the same with
BL2 because users now have other options.

> a group of talented programmers were stranded on a desert isle 
> and needed to reimplement the functionality of some modern 
> software, having only Slack 3.5 on which and for which to build 
> their applications.  They could do this, to a certain extent - 
> right?  

Yes, that could be done *except* for functionality related to
hardware innovations in the last five years.

> "necessity is the mother of invention."  Does this sort of thing
> apply to software development at all?  Seems to me like sort of 
> what BL is about, at least.

Indeed, it could be quite interesting.  You would have to become
very familiar with the differences between glibc2 and libc5 and
how to edit around those differences.  

Whether it would be worthwhile is a different question.

Cheers,
Steven