From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Mon May 14 04:37:19 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4203316A400 for ; Mon, 14 May 2007 04:37:19 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kientzle@freebsd.org) Received: from kientzle.com (h-66-166-149-50.snvacaid.covad.net [66.166.149.50]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1C1B713C45E for ; Mon, 14 May 2007 04:37:19 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kientzle@freebsd.org) Received: from [10.0.0.222] (p54.kientzle.com [66.166.149.54]) by kientzle.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id l4E4bHH7025193; Sun, 13 May 2007 21:37:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from kientzle@freebsd.org) Message-ID: <4647E77D.8020807@freebsd.org> Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 21:37:17 -0700 From: Tim Kientzle User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20060422 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org References: <200705102105.27271.blackdragon@highveldmail.co.za> <4643E10A.5030104@u.washington.edu> <20070513042254.GC1017@dwpc.dwlabs.ca> In-Reply-To: <20070513042254.GC1017@dwpc.dwlabs.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: blackdragon@highveldmail.co.za Subject: Re: New FreeBSD package system (a.k.a. Daemon Package System (dps)) X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 04:37:19 -0000 David Naylor volunteered: >Since the installation system is being tackled under a SoC project I am >hoping to give the packaging system a go. Wonderful! Be careful about one point: The packaging system as a whole is a big system; much bigger than many people believe. A lot of people (including myself) have set out to rebuild the package system. Few of us have gotten very far. (For example, I built libarchive in order to rework pkg_add. But changing pkg_add's install logic required rethinking dependency handling, which turned out to be a lot more complex than I thought.) A good place to start is with the existing tools. Search the bug reports, work up fixes to some of them and submit those fixes as follow-ups. Start conservatively; don't break compatibility with existing tools until you understand the system more completely. In particular, expect a lot of skepticism about major format changes until you have some actual numbers to back you up. A lot of people on this mailing list have looked into performance issues with the package system; the real problems may not be where you think they are. >I have searched the FreeBSD mailing lists and have found little >information on the package system. The people who maintain the current codebase are right on this mailing list. Ask away! What do you want to know? Tim Kientzle