Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 02:39:38 -0500 From: "Sam Fourman Jr." <sfourman@gmail.com> To: Garrett Cooper <yanefbsd@gmail.com> Cc: Adam Vande More <amvandemore@gmail.com>, Kris Moore <kris@pcbsd.com>, John Hixson <jhixson@gmail.com>, ports@freebsd.org, Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>, "Dave Fourman\(Gmail\)" <dfourman@gmail.com>, Matt Olander <matt@ixsystems.com>, Vanessa Kraus <vmkraus@gmail.com>, FreeBSD Current <current@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: ports and PBIs Message-ID: <i2k11167f521004100039ob1861f7bhbdaaa65202f40d75@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <x2i7d6fde3d1004100020oc8be3c51ree5f1e4b07b99f45@mail.gmail.com> References: <4BBFD502.1010507@elischer.org> <r2w6201873e1004092011y829fe434w724ccde9cbf78e2c@mail.gmail.com> <o2z11167f521004092328z50ed9c9zde0294a344439709@mail.gmail.com> <x2i7d6fde3d1004100020oc8be3c51ree5f1e4b07b99f45@mail.gmail.com>
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On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 2:20 AM, Garrett Cooper <yanefbsd@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 11:28 PM, Sam Fourman Jr. <sfourman@gmail.com> wro= te: >> On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 10:11 PM, Adam Vande More <amvandemore@gmail.com>= wrote: >>> On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 8:31 PM, Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org> w= rote: >>> >>>> >>>> Alfred Perlstein , Matt at ix systems Kris (Mr PBI), some >>>> others and I, felt that these ideas seemed to make some sense >>>> and so I put them here for comment. >>>> >>>> >>> FWIW, when I see these discussions I'm always left wondering what's the= bad >>> part? =A0I do think there are problems, but there doesn't seem to be a = clear >>> defined set of what is wrong. =A0 IMO, there should be a defined set of= goals >>> to judge possible implementations against. >> >> >> Let me start by saying FreeBSD ports is by far the best system I have >> used to date. >> but as good as it is, there is room for improvement. >> >> Being a FreeBSD user now for many years, one thing I think would be nice= is: >> being able to have easier access to development ports( Masked ports >> kinda like Gentoo). > > Masking ports and packages in general introduces all sorts of fun new > complexity for end users as well as maintainers. The last time I used > Gentoo (which was only a matter of months ago), a lot portage packages > were still masked even though they've been stable for months, years, > etc. This is very annoying for me as an end-user because bug blah > could be fixed in a later release but in order to unmask the pieces > for version blah, I had to unmask 10~15 other `unstable packages', > which greatly increased the chance of instability on my system (this > was particularly the case back several years ago, but Gentoo has > become more conservative over the years, and appears to be approaching > some level of equilibrium with Fedora, Ubuntu, etc in terms of > releases and package versioning). I wasn't suggesting that the current way Gentoo did Masking was the correct= way, in fact you have valid points that I agree with and I used Gentoo last Week= :) What I like is that, most of the portage development in done in tree, maybe the real solution is, to just have a development and release ports tree? > >> right now is a GREAT example, currently there are new Gnome ,KDE and Xor= g. >> these are all MAJOR ports,dependencies run deeper and deeper with every = release. >> there can never be enough testing...but they all exist in random >> subversion servers around the web... > > ports isn't going to solve this. Post the Xorg modularization (which > needed to occur anyhow because Xorg and Xfree86 before that was were > monolithic beasts), I personally don't see that change in the amount > of =A0flux on a quarterly cycle, and the number of packages I install > today isn't that much greater than back 6 years ago when I started > using FreeBSD. So, while there might be some claim here to note, I > think it's mostly exaggerated. Again, I agree with you, I just want a easier way to test these large ports= . >> I would very much like to help test these Major ports, but installing >> them is a pain. >> there should be some sort of overlay system in place, so I can just >> build the development ports >> after agreeing to a few well placed warnings of course. and Well if I >> hose my system all to hell.. >> well then I could just click on a bunch of PBI's and I am back in busine= ss... > > Ok, apart from the interface (click a PBI, and magically you have > packages installed)... how is this really different from binary > packages? Have you tried installing binary packages lately via > pkg_add? If not, I'd give it a shot instead of installing from ports. pkg_add does work, I have done it several times, upon learning about PBI's a few years back I wondered to myself, why not just use packages,and make some sort of GUI to add a icon to the whole ordeal. but now I get the Idea of dependencies,it pleges evey Open source OS, even ubuntu breaks every now and again. >> better still, make the development ports a PBI, I am just thinking out >> loud here,but that may work, toughts? >> >> one could say I could use merge scripts like marcusmerge for example, >> or use Virtualbox... >> but for large ports like Xorg and gnome or KDE, virtualbox doesn't cut i= t yet... >> thinks like Nvidia Video cards, multiple monitors, USB devices, and >> whatnot do not work on virtual box.. >> PBI's for development ports, with all the dependencies, wrapped in one p= ackage. > > Ok, well here's the thing. Instead of having N shared dependencies and > libraries in /usr/local/lib, you'd have N**2 shared dependencies and > libraries in each and every package. Now, let's look at size > difference. Here's just one sample: > > $ ls -l irssi-0.8.14_1.tbz ~/Downloads/Irssi0.8.14_1-PV0.pbi > -rw-r--r-- =A01 gcooper =A0gcooper =A06856203 Apr 10 00:05 > /usr/home/gcooper/Downloads/Irssi0.8.14_1-PV0.pbi > -rw-r--r-- =A01 root =A0 =A0 wheel =A0 =A0 517442 Apr 10 00:07 irssi-0.8.= 14_1.tbz > > The .tbz file is a file created with pkg_create -b, and the other file > is the PBI I pulled off of http://www.pbidir.com/bt/download/210/2079 > . Big difference in size (13.25 fold difference). > > PBIs only comprise a small set of packages in FreeBSD; if my > understanding is correct based on a mirror referenced in pbidir.com, > the number is currently under 500~750 PBIs -- this is drastically > smaller than the number of binary packages produced by ports on a > regular basis for FreeBSD. > >> solution? well let all the developers develop working ports in >> progress in one place, give users like me a way to track these changes >> and install and test them... I think FreeBSD becomes a better place for = it. > > Packages are more of the answer IMO, not PBIs. PBIs are merely a > different set of contents and different means of delivering those > contents, and while I like the idea of point - click - install, I'm > not ready to create unnecessary complexity by having libraries rev'ed > according to what the maintainer A believes are correct, even though > maintainer B set it differently, and I'm not interested in sacrificing > disk space for this reason. If I wanted to use a packaging scheme like > this, I should be using Mac OSX as my primary operating system. > > Thanks, > -Garrett > > PS Don't let this discourage you though in considering the entry-level > user case. I'm just apparently more insane than some folks (not as > insane as some others though), and I just don't believe in this > ideology because things are fine for me as-is. >
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