From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Mar 29 11:36:08 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 584E11065673 for ; Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:36:08 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@koitsu.dyndns.org) Received: from qmta14.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net (qmta14.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net [76.96.27.212]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D8688FC16 for ; Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:36:07 +0000 (UTC) Received: from omta06.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net ([76.96.30.51]) by qmta14.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net with comcast id QzXb1g00216AWCUAEzc7M9; Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:36:07 +0000 Received: from koitsu.dyndns.org ([67.180.84.87]) by omta06.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net with comcast id Qzc61g00m1t3BNj8Szc7AL; Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:36:07 +0000 Received: by icarus.home.lan (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 933609B422; Tue, 29 Mar 2011 04:36:06 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 04:36:06 -0700 From: Jeremy Chadwick To: Christian Walther Message-ID: <20110329113606.GA69065@icarus.home.lan> References: <20110329013223.ddca7453.jhsu802701@jasonhsu.com> <1301391185.71226.36.camel@xenon> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Cc: Jason Hsu , freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Michal Varga Subject: Re: Best way to switch from Linux to BSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:36:08 -0000 On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 12:59:24PM +0200, Christian Walther wrote: > What's the benefit of building everything from source? Yes, you can > configure some of the ports, but in these days you'll end up with > stuff you don't want to have anyway. I'm a zsh user and have hardly > any need for bash, except that there are ports that have it as run > and/or build dependency. Apologies if I'm missing something here, but: What if you're a zsh user who wants PCRE support, or a statically-linked shell (for cases of emergency)? You get to rebuild from source, as the package only provides what the defaults are (ZFS_PCRE=off). So, the package wouldn't suffice: # cd /usr/ports/shells/zsh # make showconfig ===> The following configuration options are available for zsh-4.3.11: ZSH_GDBM=off (default) "Enable GDBM support (GPL)" ZSH_MEM=on (default) "Enable zsh-mem and zsh-secure-free options" ZSH_MAILDIR=on (default) "Enable support for Maildirs in MAIL(PATH)" ZSH_MULTIBYTE=on (default) "Enable multibyte character support" ZSH_PCRE=off (default) "Enable PCRE support" ZSH_STATIC=off (default) "Build static executable" ===> Use 'make config' to modify these settings > And I reckon it's rather difficult to setup a system without having > python and ruby installed. Up until recent Apache 2.2.x releases, absolutely none of our systems had Python installed (I'm still sore about that and would love to know why it's suddenly needed). And absolutely none of them have Ruby. The setup of these systems is far from difficult, and all systems are built from ports/source too (sans 2 packages, see below). > Besides: I think it's one of FreeBSDs strength that you can decide not > only on how to use it, but on how to install it. You have the choice > to install FreeBSD and compile from ports, install FreeBSD and use > packages, or use PC-BSD with a juicy graphical installer. Agreed. > [talk about bloat, and how it's avoidable with packages] This is not always the case. /etc/make.conf on our systems have lots of WITHOUT_xxx=true entries, solely to diminish the amount of bloat by removing unneeded features from ports/third-party software. Using a package would pull in lots of dependencies -- the worst of which by far is anything that pulls in X-related things -- which I don't want to deal with. The only packages we use are 1) perl and 2) python26, and that's because the defaults there are decent/work great for us. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc@parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP 4BD6C0CB |