Unfortunately no one can be told what fun_plug is - you have to see it for yourself.
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Hi, I'm running funplug 0.5 on my dns323 for a wile now (very happy with it), and I know there is another similar project: optware.
Could someone explain here what are the differences between those two? I mean, are the two project complementary or are they somewhat in competition? And why not to gather the talent in a single, powerful project? i think (stop me if I'm wrong) that it would be better for everybody to have a single one, more complete and better integrated.
thanks for your answers
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The two projects are complementary and also somewhat in competition.
On dns323, funplug started earlier, with the latest funplug 0.5, it is using a brand new toolchain and uclibc. It is using on-device native compilation to build the package. Native compilation has a better chance of being configured correctly. But it's significantly slower than cross compilation. C/C++ compilation probably can be offloaded with distcc.
optware have various feeds covering more devices. The current one for dns323 uses dlink provided cross compiler so the packages are compatible with stock firmware and stock uclibc.
optware packages are in ipkg format, which is commonly used on small devices. ipkg handles dependencies, clean upgrade and removal.
optware ipkg's are mostly cross compiled - the whole dns323 feed is cross built. With work, it's also possible to setup native development with optware.
With many supported target devices, there're more optware developers than funplug. Adding a package to optware for one device, usually means that the build patch/recipe can be reused for all optware targets (sometimes requires some tweaks).
Since I'm optware feed manager from nslu2-linux.org, of course I have my bias.
Because the packaging fundamentally are different. I don't think it's easy to convince the other project. But I think friendly competition is good for the users. There're some opportunities of co-operations. Such as adding optware startup scripts in funplug, and sharing patches to build packages.
-Brian Zhou
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OK I understand well, now. Thanks.
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bzhou wrote:
On dns323, funplug started earlier, with the latest funplug 0.5, it is using a brand new toolchain and uclibc. It is using on-device native compilation to build the package. Native compilation has a better chance of being configured correctly. But it's significantly slower than cross compilation. C/C++ compilation probably can be offloaded with distcc.
The ability to run test suites is another advantage of the native approach.
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