Why should you use IRIX?
- Honestly, I have no idea.
- Just for fun? Maybe.
- To try out their C and C++ compilers? Maybe.
- To test whether pkgsrc works in weird environments? Definitely.
What's so weird about IRIX?
- The command line length is limited to 20 kB.
- No ksh, cvs, screen, mc, zsh, bzip2, bash.
- System tools (awk, sed) have low line length limits.
But ... the compiler (MIPSpro) is nice.
- Very useful wording of the diagnostics.
- Many enhanced warnings and remarks.
- The GNU extensions to C and C++ are not implemented.
- Good code? — I don't know, never tried.
Is pkgsrc on IRIX usable?
- Bootstrapping pkgsrc took some time and effort.
- Installing the first few packages took even more time.
- All usable tools were missing.
- First bulk build (heavily tweaked) succeeded with 2494 packages.
- x11/gtk2 and x11/qt3-libs failed because of the command line length limit (difficult to fix).
See also
- http://wiki.netbsd.se/index.php/How_to_use_pkgsrc_on_IRIX