Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 22:05:04 +0100 From: Chris Whitehouse <cwhiteh@onetel.com> To: Manolis Kiagias <sonic2000gr@gmail.com> Cc: Glen Barber <glen.j.barber@gmail.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: openoffice.org-3.01 packages available (i386) Message-ID: <49E10600.2040405@onetel.com> In-Reply-To: <49E09FB5.6050803@gmail.com> References: <49DBCB82.2090903@gmail.com> <4ad871310904071653hef9da1br6048618d4676d658@mail.gmail.com> <49DFE46A.2080600@onetel.com> <49E09FB5.6050803@gmail.com>
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Manolis Kiagias wrote: > Chris Whitehouse wrote: >> Hi guys, >> >> When you have a minute please would you have a look at a proposal for >> changes to the packages system I posted which is kind of a ports >> equivalent of freebsd-update involving a 'ports-snapshot'. >> >> The original post is here >> >> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2009-April/195793.html. >> >> >> A more detailed description is here >> >> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2009-April/196223.html >> >> >> And other peoples comments in between. >> >> It's going a bit parallel to the discussion here and in fact you have >> already offered some of the requirements,ie hosting >> >> Would you be interested in incorporating the idea into what you are >> doing? I could at least do some building of packages. >> >> One of the requirements is a new package management tool which I've >> called ports-update. Does anyone here have C or scripting skills who >> would be interested to write it? I'm sorry to ask, I know the FreeBSD >> way is to do it yourself, but I don't have programming skills. I could >> probably knock up a framework to start from though. >> >> If you are prepared to host a bunch of packages it would be >> interesting to ask people to give us a list of their installed >> packages to create a master list. >> >> Thanks >> >> Chris >> > > I am following this discussion too. > I was actually thinking of some less drastic method to make a FreeBSD > desktop easier to build and less time consuming. > Currently there are at least two projects based on FreeBSD that offer > reasonable BSD desktops without lots of manual setup: DesktopBSD and > PC-BSD (PC-BSD actually had a version release yesterday). The problem > is both projects focus on KDE. I would like to have a choice between > XFCE, Gnome and possibly some light WMs i.e. fluxbox. My motivation also, plus energy considerations. I was rolling my own using icewm but have recently been using PCBSD. I like PCBSD very much but I would go back to my previous setup with this project. > > I like to build my own packages, and have put together a spare machine Are you using the tinderbox port or do you build in the machines own environment? > just for this purpose. It is no speed daemon (P4 2.5Ghz, 2G DDR2 RAM) > but it is stable and always available. What I intend to do - and I am > close to this - is start building package CDs (or DVDs) that people can > download and use in the following way: > Would each CD contain all the available packages or do you have some idea to only distribute changed packages? > - Perform a base install of FreeBSD with *no* additional packages > (except maybe the linux binary compatibility) > - Insert the CD/DVD and run a dialog(1) based sh script with options to: > - Install packages > - Configure X and DE / WM > - Configure shell (i.e. startup files etc) > - Configure sound card > (and more) > > All these packages would be build from the same ports tree so they would > be in sync. There should be regular (bimonthly?) updates to the CD > itself. Everyone building a new system can use the latest CD, and > anyone who installed a system using a previous version could use the > same CD with portupgrade -PP (after setting PKG_PATH, PKG_FETCH etc). > This can actually be one of the menu options. > > Taking this one step further (using your ideas), I could also distribute > the ports tree (and probably /var/db/ports assuming the ports do not use > default options) along with the packages, so anyone wishing to compile > more stuff could use this same tree knowing it will be in sync. This achieves pretty much exactly what I was hoping for! Fantastic. I had assumed default configs though because I imagine the ports people have reasons for choosing them. > > I intend to build a prototype of this soon. It will contain XFCE, > firefox, thunderbird, vlc, bash, openoffice, Xorg and few more > packages. If it generates enough interest in the community, we will > then decide the final set of packages etc for the regular releases. Exactly. gnome and kde? Glen, I was replying to your post when Manolis's came but this has the answers. Chris > > > >
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