Did you know that #NetBSD #m68k can compile itself from scratch?
How long would you imagine it might take to compile NetBSD 10 from source on real m68k hardware? Earlier this year I wanted to find out, so I set up a Macintosh to try it.
The toolchain, OS and installation sets started on 16-March and finished on 10-May:
build.sh started: Sat Mar 16 17:04:20 UTC 2024 build.sh ended: Fri May 10 00:35:54 UTC 2024 4692724.22 real 3810544.56 user 700310.18 sys
That’s 1303 and a half hours, or almost eight weeks, or 54 days.
Installing the OS using build.sh took another four hours (4:08:39).
The kernel took another almost 21 hours (20:55).
That’s a lot of time, but it worked without issues, and the system runs happily!
@AnachronistJohn Well, about 20 years ago I made my Amiga 4000 (68040@25 MHz, 4 MB) recompile its Linux kernel — it took more than a whole day, if not multiple days. Did serve as DNS server for some years to come but in the end I did sunset that HW.
