Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2015 18:01:43 -0600 From: Andrew Berg <aberg010@my.hennepintech.edu> To: <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Ports/Packages and release engineering Message-ID: <54DFE1E7.5090205@my.hennepintech.edu> In-Reply-To: <loom.20150215T001703-97@post.gmane.org> References: <54DF89BE.6010005@complete.org> <54DFA962.2010509@infracaninophile.co.uk> <loom.20150215T001703-97@post.gmane.org>
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On 2015.02.14 17:20, John Goerzen wrote: > I actually expect to use pkg(8) rather than ports almost all of the time. > So it sounds nice that pkg(8) can do this, but I am confused about the > relation between ports and pkg. I see some rather contradictory information > out there, and wonder if this changed in FreeBSD 9 or 10? I see some people > saying that a person always needs to tell the ports system to register with > pkg, but then I don't see anything in the Handbook saying to do that these days. Ports tools create binary packages, and pkg manages them. This is a source of confusion for many, since historically, official binary packages were not updated regularly, and so trying to mix packages made from a new ports tree and official binary packages that could be months old was a source of pain, and therefore people would think of them as separate things. There is still some pain when something major in the ports tree has changed in the last week, but it is much less since a lot less will change in the course a week vs. collectively over many months. If you have many machines that you want to keep updated, I recommend either using the official binary package repo or creating and maintaining your own with Poudriere and using that. > Ah. OK. So is there really that much churn in base system libraries? It's > not necessarily an issue for me, but just a surprise; I'm used to systems > where most binaries that are a decade old still work fine on modern systems. There is compatibility stuff in the kernel and the misc/compat ports that contain libraries for old binaries. You can also install a full userland of an older release in a jail. Ancient versions can be painful, but possible (a 4.x jail on a 10.x host has been done!), while newer versions are mostly trivial.
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