Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:04:35 +0000 From: Kostas Petrikas <kpetrikas@gmail.com> To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: bxpkg - a new way to deal with binary upgrades. Message-ID: <AANLkTinFtxewegNBk9V%2BR2LJhV8Y2kRhX0zr3cgXXMPu@mail.gmail.com>
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Hello! In the past I had troubles with upgrading 3rd party software on desktop PCs as usually desktop environments have a quite big list of packages installed. Upgrading or even installing from ports could take a lot of time specially on slower laptops (can take days). While FreeBSD provides binary package repositories there really aren't any easy ways to use them for upgrades as there are no tools provided to handle them (pkg_add is not able to handle updates). To upgrade from binary packages one needs to get dependency list write it down, deinstall package and its dependencies, install dependencies and the package. It is frustrating and it corrupts required_by lists for the dependencies. There is also no easy way to know what versions are available in binary format. This dilemma inspired me to write "bxpkg" to handle binary upgrades and installation for desktop environments (since I use mostly GTK+ toolkit, its written using it). It solves all the problems in fast and good looking fashion. On a side note, the back-end is done in form of a library written from scratch that handles most package routines in robust but simple API. bxpkg is available from ports "ports-mgmt/bxpkg" or project's website "http://bxpkg.bsdroot.lv".
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