From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Mar 10 15:32: 4 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from news-ma.rhein-neckar.de (news-ma.rhein-neckar.de [193.197.90.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 12E0237BA03 for ; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 15:31:56 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from daemon@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de) Received: from bigeye.rhein-neckar.de (uucp@localhost) by news-ma.rhein-neckar.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with bsmtp id AAA20530 for freebsd-chat@freebsd.org; Sat, 11 Mar 2000 00:31:54 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from daemon@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by bigeye.rhein-neckar.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) id XAA24104 for freebsd-chat@freebsd.org; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 23:53:41 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from daemon) From: naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de (Christian Weisgerber) Subject: Re: BSD Merger Announcement Date: 10 Mar 2000 23:53:41 +0100 Message-ID: <8abudl$ngt$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> References: <20000309235232L.jhix@mindspring.com> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Matthew N. Dodd wrote: > Another area of mutual benefit is the ports system and while each OS uses > different tools and implementations in their build/install/package system > the patches and other meta-information is likely to be sharable. Wouldn't > it be nice if we had a unified ports tree? Yes, but I don't see any sign of (interest in) this. The {Free,Net,Open}BSD ports systems have diverged significantly. NetBSD seems to have greatly improved the pkg tools. On the OpenBSD front, Marc Espie is continously reworking the ports system (and cleaning up make(1) along with it), but while he probably would appreciate if his work was shared by the other BSDs, nobody there seems to take notice. Log messages like "Stop phantasizing about merging pkgs back into FreeBSD, instead tell people to submit patches that apply without fuzz. (Maybe someone could explain the exact issues with this)." (seen this evening on NetBSD's source-changes mailing list, i.e. their equivalent of cvs-all) don't inspire my confidence that there is any interest in merging the ports trees. Hell, we can't even agree on a common name for the p* system! > If we had users/developers from all 3 projects working on > maintaining the ports/pkgsrc/foo tree we'd probably be in a better > position to keep it up to date. Maybe its time to split the ports > tree off into its own project? I know the last time such a thing > was discussed the other projects rejected the idea fearing that > they would lack representation in something that was essentially > FreeBSD centric. What are the solutions to this problem? The same as for the userland reunification that was proposed elsewhere in this thread. Change needs to flow from the bottom up. You need a grassroots movement. Developers from all projects need to look at the other projects' work and start merging in changes. Don't politicize, just do it. The NIH attitude needs to go from people's minds. Gratuitous differences must not be introduced. If you add a new port/feature, try to add it to all projects in parallel. Find similar thinking developers at the other projects. There was a "BSD boosters" project "to bring the userlands of the three BSD's (FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD) closer together in order to provide for a consistent set of base tools and manual pages." I think it can be safely considered defunct at this time. See http://home.wxs.nl/~asmodai/bsdb.html for an idea that failed. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message