From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Dec 17 17:20:14 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9A1D416A419 for ; Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:20:14 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from david@wood2.org.uk) Received: from lon-mail-4.gradwell.net (lon-mail-4.gradwell.net [193.111.201.130]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 141C213C448 for ; Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:20:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from david@wood2.org.uk) Received: from argon.wood2.org.uk ([82.71.104.124] country=GB ident=postmaster#pop3#wood2^org&uk) by lon-mail-4.gradwell.net with esmtpa (Gradwell gwh-smtpd 1.264) id 4766afcc.dbaa.2cc; Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:20:12 +0000 (envelope-sender ) Message-ID: Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:19:04 +0000 To: Stephen Montgomery-Smith From: David Wood References: <4766650C.4020305@gmail.com> <47667E17.6030004@math.missouri.edu> In-Reply-To: <47667E17.6030004@math.missouri.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=us-ascii;format=flowed User-Agent: Turnpike/6.06-M (<+nhRuLNS5oZIqwOH7WWZxwfp$O>) Cc: "Aryeh M. Friedman" , freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Request for Features: Ports Re-engineering X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:20:14 -0000 Dear all, In message <47667E17.6030004@math.missouri.edu>, Stephen Montgomery-Smith writes >One thing to look at is package building. I don't know how they build >the official packages, but my guess is that they build each one from a >clean system. But, for example, you have tons of little ports each >depending on xorg-server, and to rebuild xorg-server for each little >port must be a real burden. > >On the other hand some ports really need to be built from a clean >system. Some of them autodetect ports that are already installed, and >then change options appropriately. (Maybe some of the multimedia ports >like vlc do this.) My guess is that this is to some extent unavoidable >because the "configure" script in the port build process probably does >this as well. Anyway, perhaps this autodetecting of ports to provide >options needs to be built into the system in a systematic manner. One example of ports that change their dependencies depending on what is already installed is OpenSSL. bsd.openssl.mk ensures that if the security/openssl port is available, it will be used by ports instead of OpenSSL from the base system. Because of the rules of a stable branch, the base OpenSSL on many machines is quite old; it's kept up to date with security patches, but that's it. Before I build anything else on a machine, I install ports-mgmt/portconf and set ports.conf to build OpenSSL 0.9.8, then I build security/openssl before building anything else. On one system I'm logged into at the moment: [david@titanium ~]$ uname -prs FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p9 i386 [david@titanium ~]$ openssl version OpenSSL 0.9.7e-p1 25 Oct 2004 [david@titanium ~]$ /usr/local/bin/openssl version OpenSSL 0.9.8g 19 Oct 2007 [david@titanium ~]$ pkg_info -R 'openssl-*' Information for openssl-0.9.8g: Required by: apcupsd-3.14.2 freeradius-2.0.0.p2 libchk-1.9 mysql-client-5.0.51 neon-0.26.4 net-snmp-5.3.1_7 openldap-client-2.3.39 portupgrade-2.3.1,2 postgresql-client-7.4.18 ruby-1.8.6.111_1,1 ruby18-bdb44-0.6.2 samba-3.0.28,1 subversion-1.4.4_1 svn2cl-0.9 svn_load_dirs-1.4.3 svndelta-1.0.6 wireshark-0.99.6 Some of those are not direct dependencies. 7.x has rather more up to date OpenSSL in the base system, but it's still not the latest version (csup followed by rebuilding kernel and world about a week ago): [david@osmium ~]$ uname -prs FreeBSD 7.0-BETA4 i386 [david@osmium ~]$ openssl version OpenSSL 0.9.8e 23 Feb 2007 [david@osmium ~]$ /usr/local/bin/openssl version OpenSSL 0.9.8g 19 Oct 2007 This is just one example of the complexities that can arise with server ports. My main use for FreeBSD is as a server OS. I maintain net/freeradius and there's a PR being worked on by a committer for net/freeradius-devel (for FreeRADIUS 2.0.0-pre). (You can see that port installed on 'titanium'). FreeRADIUS depends on OpenSSL (base or ports), and can depend on the clients of OpenLDAP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, Oracle (I've got someone who's looking at creating an Oracle patch even though it's not currently supported) as well as Heimdal or MIT Kerberos 5. Throw in the dependencies of those clients, and things start to get complicated quite rapidly. The FreeBSD mail system that I'm working on that is likely to take over from my Windows based mail system is another example of complex dependencies. It's built around Postfix, Dovecot and amavisd-new. I have Postfix depending on Dovecot for authenticated SMTP SASL logins from users and Cyrus-SASL for authenticated SMTP sending to a smarthost, also OpenSSL for TLS/SSL, PCRE for regex support in the configuration and the MySQL client for reading my database tables. Dovecot has similarly complicated dependencies in many people's systems. amavisd-new typically has many levels of dependencies - it usually depends on p5-Mail-SpamAssassin, which in turn usually depends on gnupg, which in turn usually depends on openldap23-client! By the time you're using LDAP, one or more SQL databases, SASL and Berkeley DB across your server, the dependencies can be many levels deep. Best wishes, David -- David Wood david@wood2.org.uk