From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jan 30 23:51:06 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3176F1065676 for ; Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:51:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk) Received: from smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (smtp6.infracaninophile.co.uk [IPv6:2001:8b0:151:1:3cd3:cd67:fafa:3d78]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9A2428FC12 for ; Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:51:05 +0000 (UTC) Received: from seedling.black-earth.co.uk (seedling.black-earth.co.uk [IPv6:2001:8b0:151:1:fa1e:dfff:feda:c0bb]) (authenticated bits=0) by smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id q0UNp15M006252 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:51:01 GMT (envelope-from m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk) X-DKIM: OpenDKIM Filter v2.4.3 smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk q0UNp15M006252 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=infracaninophile.co.uk; s=201001-infracaninophile; t=1327967461; bh=flIDCaNXbVpuum1Yn165oAP+DVGT9pgTM8aUY/w+BJE=; h=Message-ID:Date:From:MIME-Version:To:Subject:References: In-Reply-To:Content-Type:Cc; b=e0TNs69lW1IRmdzTaxhQmVt4CloqhMwL6zN114q9yaYwYRYYyn9WTexjp3gG+c7hZ NOP/SXIR2iuIzy7zkvFFnl85ixD3a5fmH7BdjT48vo7z+JuHNt6rZMxc+i46IQgO0G 2W6rr+dlKJQZcQTHlYI/HX6wQJABJlviNb3v9Kso= Message-ID: <4F272CDC.5010408@infracaninophile.co.uk> Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:50:52 +0000 From: Matthew Seaman User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:9.0) Gecko/20111222 Thunderbird/9.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <20120130215826.140fa9df@mpw> In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 1.3.4 OpenPGP: id=60AE908C Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="------------enig25BCD70EE623D97C543F68D9" X-Virus-Scanned: clamav-milter 0.97.3 at lucid-nonsense.infracaninophile.co.uk X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.7 required=5.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID,DKIM_VALID_AU autolearn=ham version=3.3.2 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.2 (2011-06-06) on lucid-nonsense.infracaninophile.co.uk Subject: Re: Unable to upgrade packages on FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:51:06 -0000 This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) --------------enig25BCD70EE623D97C543F68D9 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 30/01/2012 22:04, David Jackson wrote: > Binary packages are a big time saver and are more efficient. Yes, definitely -- this is true for many use cases. Not all by any means, but enough that binary packages are a must-have. > It should be easy for FreeBSD to make it easy to install the most > recent versions of all binary packages, its beyond belief they cannot > pull off such a simple ans straight forward, and basic part of any > OS. Now this I dispute absolutely. Whatever gave you the idea that generating and maintaining an archive of binary packages was at all "simple and straight forward?" It is most emphatically neither of those things. Firstly there's a matter of the scale of the job -- the ports contains around 23,000 different software packages. That's pretty respectable compared to most Linux distributions, remembering that there are several hundred packages' worth of stuff in the base system which would have to be packaged in a comparable Linux system. Most of those software packages are under active development, and virtually none of them are prepared to alter their release schedules one iota to suit FreeBSD. Just keeping that collection current is a huge task, let alone trying to maintain and improve the system used to do it. Then there's the small matter of compiling all that software to produce the binary packages. At the moment there are 3 different major OS versions supported across two Tier-1 architectures (i386, amd64 -- everything is expected to work on Tier-1) and four Tier-2 architectures (ia64, sparc64, powerpc, pc98 -- which should be supported for package building, but only on a 'best efforts' basis) plus maybe 3 or 4 other experimental architectures like arm and mips which have the potential to become very important in the future as they are the basis of a lot of embedded computing devices. And people have the temerity to complain if updates aren't available online within a few days! To support all that takes some pretty impressive computing power spread over three different data centers (I believe), all of which has been *donated* to the FreeBSD project, and all of the power, cooling, bandwidth, maintenance and other ongoing hosting costs are similarly supplied by donation. Not to mention a hard-core of about 20 key ports committers, plus maybe a hundred-odd other committers taking a more peripheral role, and some 4,000 other volunteers that do the work of maintaining everything. All of this elides one of the insanely great features of the ports -- which is how configurable and adaptable they are. The trouble is, the design of the ports really does work best for compiling from source. There is functionality there which is somewhere between "incredibly difficult" and "simply impossible" to push up to a set of pre-compiled binary packages. (Which, by the way, is a feature common to all binary packaging systems: you always get whatever someone else thought was a good idea at the time.) The ports really are one of FreeBSD's crown jewels, and as a system for compiling software from source and installing and maintaining the results it has few peers. It is certainly true that FreeBSD's binary package management could be better. Binary package management under FreeBSD has always been seen as bit of a second choice compared to ports, and consequently it has not had the same sort of development effort put into it. Until recently, that is. We have literally just had the announcement of the beta test version of the new next-generation binary packaging system on the freebsd-ports@... list earlier today. Don't get too excited though -- it will be months at the very least before pkgng goes into anything like production. Cheers, Matthew --=20 Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard Flat 3 PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate JID: matthew@infracaninophile.co.uk Kent, CT11 9PW --------------enig25BCD70EE623D97C543F68D9 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.16 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk8nLOQACgkQ8Mjk52CukIwbkACfShcW8pp2anxNlUaQhxFLWuWZ MYMAoIBaBhWnCDsy6CQqZtjg+9oXMOaI =btX3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------enig25BCD70EE623D97C543F68D9--