From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jun 3 07:58:18 2012 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 CD18C106566B for ; Sun, 3 Jun 2012 07:58:18 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from matthew@FreeBSD.org) Received: from smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (smtp6.infracaninophile.co.uk [IPv6:2001:8b0:151:1:3cd3:cd67:fafa:3d78]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 42E238FC14 for ; Sun, 3 Jun 2012 07:58:18 +0000 (UTC) Received: from seedling.black-earth.co.uk (seedling.black-earth.co.uk [81.187.76.163]) (authenticated bits=0) by smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id q537wDB4094543 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Sun, 3 Jun 2012 08:58:13 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from matthew@FreeBSD.org) X-DKIM: OpenDKIM Filter v2.5.2 smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk q537wDB4094543 Authentication-Results: smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk/q537wDB4094543; dkim=none (no signature); dkim-adsp=none Message-ID: <4FCB190E.5070702@FreeBSD.org> Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2012 08:58:06 +0100 From: Matthew Seaman User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:12.0) Gecko/20120428 Thunderbird/12.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Erich References: <4FC9F245.8030300@digsys.bg> <1628003.3f5XqiNPan@x220.ovitrap.com> In-Reply-To: <1628003.3f5XqiNPan@x220.ovitrap.com> X-Enigmail-Version: 1.4.1 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="------------enig39EE603C3DD3CADF80A05504" X-Virus-Scanned: clamav-milter 0.97.4 at lucid-nonsense.infracaninophile.co.uk X-Virus-Status: Clean X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.6 required=5.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.3.2 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.2 (2011-06-06) on lucid-nonsense.infracaninophile.co.uk Cc: Alexander Yerenkow , freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org Subject: Implications of pkgng, was Re: Why Are You NOT Using FreeBSD ? 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: Sun, 03 Jun 2012 07:58:18 -0000 This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) --------------enig39EE603C3DD3CADF80A05504 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 03/06/2012 02:21, Erich wrote: >> 2. No decent packet manager (I hope pkgng will make life easier). You >> > can't just upgrade this and that packet and see what's new, and >> > rollback if you don't like somthing . > I really hope this will never come. Why? It will kill make install. > Make install is the key to FreeBSD. I doubt very much indeed that pkgng will "kill make install." What it will do is fill in a widely recognised gap in FreeBSD's offering: that FreeBSD is essentially unmanageable at the moment only using binary packages. While compiling from ports really is the gold standard for tunability, configurability and lots of other good things, it lacks quite a lot in terms of speed and convenience for most users. This is something that turns off lots of new users coming from Linux or MacOSX before they have really had a chance to get to grips with the OS and start to appreciate its finer qualities. Somewhere that FreeBSD does itself absolutely no favours. The ideal which I think is attainable with pkgng is to be able to use the ports to compile your own customized versions of the applications which are critical to you, but otherwise rely on pre-compiled packages for anything else. Also, consider people developing embedded devices (and this is going to be a *major* area for FreeBSD in the future) -- you want to compile software offline (probably cross-compiling on a completely different architecture), strip out inessential documentation and so forth and manage precisely what is installed on your device using an efficient binary package manager. pkgng promises to make this feasible. PC-BSD's .pbi package format is another way of addressing this same sort of problem, and although originally aimed at desktop users it makes a lot of sense for server side usage too. As .pbi and pkgng are actually complimentary, rather than in competition, expect some interesting developments in the relatively near future. > I believe a better solution would be versioning of the ports tree. > When the ports tree compiles fully, it can be saved and its version > number incremented. This is simply a non-starter. Remember what the ports tree is: *third party software* ported to run on FreeBSD. That 3rd party software is going to continue to be developed at its own pace without any reference to the FreeBSD project. You can't just choose a point in time for the ports tree and expect it to keep working effectively. Particularly not if you admit the possibility of updating some packages for security reasons or other egregious bugs. Nor will most users be content with running year-or-more old versions of most software packages. In fact, one of the big plusses of the ports is how up to date it generally is. Most big packages are updated in the ports within days of updates being published upstream. > I do not believe that much more would be needed. Of course, we have > then a huge number of versions. Would it matter? Give the ports tree > the major version number of the latest release. So, at the moment it > would be 10. Increment then the minor every hour if you want. Just > make sure that the ports tree can be downloaded for some time under > this version number. What exactly is this supposed to solve? Simply attaching a number to the ports tree won't do anything. There is already a promise that the ports should work on all supported FreeBSD release branches. Besides, with the imminent switch of the ports from CVS to SVN, there will soon be a global revision number for the whole ports tree. Cheers, Matthew --=20 Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 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