[GNU] Welcome to the Athena GNU Locker
The gnu locker is a repository for software from the Free Software Foundation which was released under the GNU General Public License. If you have comments or bug reports, or if you would like us to update or add a piece of software, send mail to the maintainers:
gnu@mit.edu
To run GNU programs conveniently under Athena, attach this locker with the command attach gnu, or better yet use the command add gnu to put it on your executable search path as well as attaching it.

Topics:

Organization of this locker

The GNU locker is organized according to the current Athena conventions (see man locker). Executables, libraries, and other architecture-specific files are stored in subdirectories named after each platform under the "arch" subdirectory. There are also symbolic links 'bin', 'gbin', and 'lib' at the top level which use the AFS @sys value so they always point at the appropriate directories for your platform.

Accessing GNU programs: bin vs. gbin

Since many of the GNU programs have the same names as the programs they replace in a standard commercial Unix such as Solaris or IRIX, we have renamed them with a "g" prefix before the name, e.g. gtar, gdiff, etc. Then, if you have the GNU locker executables anywhere in your path, you can choose to use a GNU program without worrying if the Solaris version comes first in the path, and without typing the full filename. (See the directions on attaching the locker for details.)

The directory gbin contains symbolic links to various GNU programs without the leading "g" prefix, so if you want to use GNU programs in preference to the operating system's versions, just put /mit/gnu/gbin in your path before the system binary directories. Note that these links do not (and never will) include "ld", "cc", "as", and "make", since compilation tools often assume that those names refer to native tools. Also, "finger" is excluded since the GNU version does not have the same functionality as most vendor OSs' versions.

Gnuplot and other refugees

The GNU locker is intended only for software from the GNU project of the Free Software Foundation. At some point the gnuplot program was mistakenly added; despite its name it has nothing to do with the FSF. Programs that do not belong in this locker have been migrated as follows:
gnuplot
Has moved to the gnuplot locker.
ghostscript
The latest version, released as Aladdin Ghostscript, can be found in the ghostscript locker.

Documentation

The doc directory contains documentation for the programs in this locker, including man pages, info pages, and dvi files formatted for printing.

Documentation can be found on the Web at:

        http://web.mit.edu/gnu/doc/html/menu.html

To print out a GNU documentation dvi file, run the command

        dvips -Pprintername /mit/gnu/doc/dvi/filename.dvi

Source

The src directory ideally contains source for all of the programs installed in this locker on the supported platforms. The src/NOTES subdirectory contains notes about modifications made to the sources in order to get them to work properly in the Athena environment. The src directory is structured with lettered subdirectories; for instance, "gcc-2.7.2" would be found in "src/g/gcc-2.7.2".

Each platform has a sub-volume under arch. There are several sub-volumes for source (/mit/gnu/src/vol?) and a subvolume for builds (/mit/gnu/.build). /mit/gnu/build should point to the build directory for your platform.

Library data common to all platforms is stored in /mit/gnu/share. Library data common to big-endian and little-endian platforms are stored in arch/big-endian and arch/little-endian. Executables common to all platforms are currently copied for each platform (they're small).

All binaries are stripped. Ideally, libraries are built with symbols (gcc -g -O) and not stripped, to aid in debugging programs which link against them.

Ideally, binaries will not rely on @sys, for ease of migration to other filesystems. In practice, some binaries currently rely on @sys; to avoid this, when configuring packages, use "--prefix=/mit/gnu --exec-prefix=/mit/gnu/arch/$ATHENA_SYS".

Reporting Bugs

If you are reporting a bug with the compilers (gcc, g++) you should include as many as the following as you can: Always describe the platform where you encountered the bug and provide a way to reproduce it if possible. Send bug reports to gnu@mit.edu
Comments and questions may be directed to: gnu@mit.edu
Last modified on $Date: 2000/05/03 05:28:44 $ by $Author: lcs $

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