Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:05:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug Barton <dougb@FreeBSD.org> To: Michel Talon <talon@lpthe.jussieu.fr> Cc: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Utility for safe updating of ports in base system Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.1.10.0803200047360.54264@ync.qbhto.arg> In-Reply-To: <20080320001048.GA39125@lpthe.jussieu.fr> References: <20080320001048.GA39125@lpthe.jussieu.fr>
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On Thu, 20 Mar 2008, Michel Talon wrote:
> Doug Barton wrote:
>> So, I renew my inquiry. :) Is portmaster a suitable candidate to fulfill
>> the role of the utility described, and if not, why not?
>
> At the risk of being flamed,
I certainly hope not. :)
> i would venture to say that such an utility
> should be able to upgrade things based of *binary* packages, and
> consequently that portmaster is not a suitable candidate.
That ability is not included in the current requirements document, and was
not specifically mentioned the last time we had the discussion on the
list. If the portmgr folks intend that to be a requirement, the current
ideas list entry should be amended.
> For example
> pkg_add installs a binary package, if you want to compile and install
> you run "make all install clean" in the ports tree.
Um, you lost me there.
> One of the
> requirements of an upgrade system is predictability, this can only
> be achieved by using binary packages.
You gain a certain amount of flexibility with packages, at the expense of
being able to customize things. As long as the user understands that, then
it's fine.
> Another requirement, in my opinion,
> is speed, and the lack of speed, which is completely hidden when you
> compile your packages will be immediately apparent if you try to use
> packages. Indeed portupgrade has options -P and -PP to work with
> packages which could serve as a prototype for a "pkg_upgrade" written
> in C, except that they work poorly, and in particular run slowly.
Where do you think the slowness is?
> In my opinion, an example of a correct "pkg_upgrade" type programm
> written in C++ is the Debian apt-get. It works predictably, fast, etc.
> One of its features, that i consider very important for correct
> operation, is that it computes the list of all packages to be deleted
> and all packages to be installed and asks the user if he agrees before
> doing anything.
Why do you consider this an important feature? (I'm not disagreeing, just
curious about your thought process here.)
> It fetches all necessary packages before installing or
> deleting anything.
That seems sensible, thanks for mentioning that bit.
> Hence you can be sure that the upgrade process will
> not end in a mess if something crashes in the middle, like it is the
> case with all present standard FreeBSD upgraders.
Not sure if this helps the situation you're referring to or not, but
portmaster will by default make a backup package of each port that it
updates, so if something dies in the middle you could back out of it by
hand if you need to.
Now all that said, I'd love to see us move to a much more robust package
management system, or even just a better interface to the one we have. The
problem is that I don't have the time to do that as a volunteer project,
and I don't think anyone else does either. :)
Doug
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