[REBOL] Re: Hacking 32-bit rebol for 64-bit ubuntu
From: tim-johnsons:web at: 26-May-2007 7:35
On Friday 25 May 2007 23:40, Peter Wood wrote:
> Tim
>
> Is it living in Alaska that gave you such persistence and ingenuity?
:-) No. It's growing up on a homestead in North Dakota
> I'm more than impressed.
>
> Thanks for taking the time to tell us.
>
> On the portability front, RT has been finding it difficult to keep up
> for the last couple of years. The versions for many platforms are stuck
> at Core 2.5.1. I think that Carl recognised the problem and has adopted
> a different design for Rebol 3 to ease porting Rebol. (You may want to
> take a look at his slides from the recent DevCon -
> http://www.rebol.com/notes/devcon07-carl.zip )
I know a bit about the history of rebol. My niece worked for them in
2000. That's Jessica Johnson.
> From my point of view, at the moment RT still sees Windows as its main
> platform based, I presume, on current installed PC numbers. Linux and
> Mac OS X come a distant second, even though I believe they are more
> popular with the type of developers who are likely to adopt Rebol.
> (Windows developers seem to develop exclusively for Windows, developers
> who use other systems appear more likely to be interested in
> cross-platform).
I developed in the windows/DOS environment for 13 years before migrating
to linux. Even so, I run windows on top of linux. It is actually much more
and stable this way and: :-) When windoze crashes
you can reboot in seconds.
I do mostly web programming. For the first 5 years I did so, I was compiling
on NT machines and uploading executables to a NT web server. Now, although
all of my clients use windows for workstations, *none* of them would allow
their assets (i.e. work I do for them) to be served from a Windows
web server. That's why they come to me...
It is probably safe to say that the percentages of web programmers using
non-windows OS is higher than that of the general population. In fact a
windows programmer using rebol to do web development would want the
rebol binary to be as portable as possible, to give him/here and clients the
widest choice of platforms.
Some speculations about a "tipping point" that may cause to a
dramatic increase are:
1)A developing relationship between Dell and ubuntu - is happening
2)Walmart increasing sales of linux-based computers, perhaps
introducing it's own OS
3)Stepped - up EU legal action against MS.
4)Resumption of US gov legal action against MS
5)Increase in state legal actions against MS
6)Increased adoption of Open Document exchange standards.
7)Some spinoff of Macintosh use of the BSD (linux kernel)
8)Greater use of Linux embedded systems and PC systems in the
telecommunications industry.
NOTE: These are not necessarily my opinions, I'm just listing. And I have two
brothers in the telecommunications industry who are privy to much info, much
of it confidential......
I still suspect that a "dramatic" increase would still leave MS with the
market share.
I don't want to be involved in an argument over OS choice, so I'm
reluctant to elaborate on the speculation here - and :-) my niece has
*no* juicy gossip to contribute.
Cheers
tim
> Regards
>
> Peter
>
> On Friday, May 25, 2007, at 04:00 pm, Tim Johnson wrote:
> > When I attempted to install the 32-bit rebol binary which was compiled
> > for
> > 32-bit ubuntu on ubuntu 7.04, execution of the binary returned only a
> > message: "No such file or directory". I believe that message came from
> > rebol itself, but that is only speculation on my part.
> >
> > Running ldd was unsuccessful even tho' `file rebol' did report that is
> > was
> > a 32-bit executable.
> >
> > Running `ldd rebol' on slackware returned this information:
> > libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x4002c000)
> > libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4004e000)
> > /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
> > libm.so.6 and libc.so.6 were present on the ubuntu machine, but
> > ld-linux.so.2 - the dynamic loader - was not. Ubuntu has obsoleted it.
> > Installing a 32-bit loader was unsuccessful.
> >
> > I'm an old (in more ways than one) "C" programmer with some experience
> > working
> > with dlls on windows, which are the equivalent of linux shared object
> > libraries. I suspected that the paths to the shared objects were
> > hard-coded
> > in the binary and after some inspection I did find them.
> >
> > I made a copy of the rebol binary on opened with vim using the -b
> > switch,
> > thus putting vim in binary mode.
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > ---------------------
> > NOTE: There is a wonderful windows shareware application called
> > ztreewin,
> > and one of it's tools is a hex editor - actually it is a modern clone
> > of
> > xtreegold.
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > --------------------
> > I then edited the paths to the binaries as follows:
> > libm.so.6 => l1bm.so.6
> > libc.so.6 => l1bc.so.6
> > ld-linux.so.2 => ld-l1nux.so.2
> > and made copies of the shared objects with those name changes, ported
> > all to
> > the ubuntu machine and I have rebol running.
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > -
> > Now for a bit of a rant:
> > RT likes to advertise rebol's portability - RT: put your money where
> > your
> > mouth is and provide a build that is compatible with 64-bit ubuntu,
> > 'cuz I
> > suspect that there is going to be a lot of those distros being
> > installed in
> > the future.
> > _and_ get rebol in the repositories!!!
> > -------- end of rant------------------------------
> > In the next few days, I will be putting this ubuntu machine to work
> > with rebol
> > scripts. If the "hacked" rebol shows no problems, then the solution
> > could be
> > so simple as to recompile the standard linux build with different
> > names for
> > the shared objects and their paths, and include those renamed objects
> > as part
> > of the package.
> > -------------- DISCLAIMER --------------------------
> > Since rebol is not open source, it is my hope that RT will have no
> > objection
> > to this "hack" as an interim solution.
> >
> > I want to thank everybody that helped me out with this issue. Couldn't
> > have
> > done it without you. :-)
> > Tim
> >
> > --
> > Tim Johnson <tim-johnsons-web.com>
> > Palmer, Alaska, USA
> > --
> > To unsubscribe from the list, just send an email to
> > lists at rebol.com with unsubscribe as the subject.
--
Tim Johnson <tim-johnsons-web.com>
Palmer, Alaska, USA
