[ Thanks to keskoy
for this link. ]
“David Cantrell is a core team member for the Slackware
Linux Project. In this interview you will learn how David got his
start working on Slackware Linux, what his role as a Slackware
developer is, and he will explain to us about his two new
applications protopkg and autoslack, plus other various topics
of interest are touched on.”
“Q. What is your role in porting Slackware to
the SPARC? How far along is the sparc port and what are the major
issues that still need to be worked out?
A. I’m heading up the Slackware SPARC port. The
port is mostly complete at this point, I’m finishing up some
installer stuff at the moment, but it boots now, installs itself,
and X even runs (3.3.6 or 4.0.1, your choice). The port is
currently in private beta, but I’ll be moving to -current status on
ftp.slackware.com soon.”
“Q. Autoslack and protopkg are 2 fairly new
applications being developed mainly by you. Both are specifically
geared towards Slackware and hold incredible potential. Could you
briefly explain what each does, how far along they are, and what
your short term and long term goals for each are.
A. Keeping our machines running -current is
extremely important, as we need to be able to test the latest
additions on a wide variety of machines. Since this is something I
do almost daily, I decided to write a tool to handle it for me.
Using the CHECKSUMS.md5 files that we provide in the distribution,
autoslack will look at your machine and a distribution tree of your
choice and tell you what packages can be removed, upgrade, or new
ones that can be installed. Optionally it can download those
packages and/or perform the actual package operation. …”