Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2024 15:36:07 -0400 From: David Cross <dcrosstech@gmail.com> To: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: It's not Rust, it's FreeBSD (and LLVM) Message-ID: <159D15FA-6235-484C-A54A-565E3CDEA690@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <202409031532.483FW0If007252@critter.freebsd.dk> References: <202409031532.483FW0If007252@critter.freebsd.dk>
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> On Sep 3, 2024, at 11:32=E2=80=AFAM, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk=
> wrote:
>=20
> =EF=BB=BFWhat is FreeBSD ?
> -----------------
>=20
> Forget Rust for the moment, I promise I will come back to it.
>=20
> FreeBSD as a project was created almost entirely as protest against
> the incompetent "UNIX-industry" as it existed around 1990.
>=20
> One of the stupidities we reacted against, was the unbundling of
> the C-compiler: If you bought a UNIX system, the C-compiler would
> cost you extra, even through everybody knew that the vendor got it
> as part of their source license from AT&T.
>=20
> So from the very start, FreeBSD decided to deliver "A complete UNIX
> system with full source" and the only concession was that, hard
> disks costing what they did, you could choose to not install the
> manual pages and the source code on systems which did not need them.
>=20
> ('make world' celebrated 30 years last month! See: 3540f0e14a8)
>=20
> The only compiler we had source code for was GCC. We would have
> preferred a different license, but we had no choice at the time.
>=20
> There were people who, reasonably, thought that X11 was also part
> of a "complete UNIX system", but the reality of 1.2MB "3D-printed
> save icons" made that a total non-starter, and therefore the ports
> collection is FreeBSD's barely younger twin.
>=20
> The source tree became our citadel: "FreeBSD is src". If something
> was not in src, it was not FreeBSD.
>=20
> Buildworld or bust.
>=20
> The fight at the gate was fierce at times.
>=20
> Delivering a single consistent userland with the kernel has stood
> us well for three decades, and we should stick with that.
>=20
> But the world has changed, and we all know it, which is why ports,
> pkg, freebsd-update and pkgbase exist.
>=20
> A FreeBSD system with no installed ports is a rarity today.
>=20
> Not even a FreeBSD developers test-machine can avoid git-lite, but
> such machines do exist, typically in embedded applications.
>=20
> But a FreeBSD system recompiling itself from source is even rarer.
>=20
> And when it does, LLVM, source code we import verbatim from an
> entirely different project, and which no sane person would call
> "Related to FreeBSD", takes up more than three quarters of the
> compile time.
>=20
> That is objectively absurd.
>=20
> The only reason we do that, is because we stil have that outdated
> "FreeBSD is src" emotional hangup.
>=20
> We need to find a contemporary and useful answer to "What is FreeBSD?"
>=20
>=20
> The only answer I can think of
> ------------------------------
>=20
> "FreeBSD is ports (some of those ports contain the kernel and userland)"
>=20
> As part of the migration, we yank LLVM out of the src.
>=20
> LLVM does not belong in src by any sane criteria, and any microscopic
> benefits of "tight integration" can be delivered with a "toolchain-llvm"
> (meta-)port.
>=20
> Our minimal install images will contain:
>=20
> The installer
> The kernel package(s)
> The userland package(s)
>=20
> "pkg upgrade" also upgrade kernel and userland packages - Welcome to
> the century of the fruitbat.
>=20
> The "normal install images will also contain:
>=20
> The src package(s)
> the source code built into kernel and userland packages
> The toolchain package(s)
> the package used to build the kernel and userland packages
> The ports package(s)
> the ports tree used to build the toolchain package(s)
> All distribution files necessary to build the toolchain package(s)
>=20
> (The "toolchain-llvm" (meta-)port may have to be a short-cut, to
> not have the llvm port drag in everything and the kitchen-sink,
> which would be /precisely/ the same as the llvm which lives in src
> today.)
>=20
> This distribution format is neither more nor less perfect with
> respect to reproducible builds and "Reflections on trusting trust"
> than what we have today.
>=20
> And yes, we have ports written in Rust, why do you ask?
>=20
> Poul-Henning
>=20
> PS: I overdosed on release work 25+ years ago, and have not been
> paying them much attention since, but if this is what the pkgbase
> crew has been pushing for more than a decade, we all owe them an
> apology.
As a quick note I constantly build freebsd from source. I do it for all of m=
y systems for all updates, all patch releases.=20
I may be an outlier here, but my impression from email, forum posts, and red=
it threads suggests it is at least somewhat common.=20
There are ways to marry both worlds (like poudriere, which I also use to man=
age my empire), but I=E2=80=99d like to not completely discount the usecase;=
at the very least the ease of buildworld is important for the releasee engi=
neering process
itself.=20=
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