From owner-freebsd-ports Wed Aug 28 02:41:14 1996 Return-Path: owner-ports Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id CAA15574 for ports-outgoing; Wed, 28 Aug 1996 02:41:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from relay.nuxi.com (nuxi.cs.ucdavis.edu [128.120.56.38]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id CAA15567 for ; Wed, 28 Aug 1996 02:41:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from obrien@localhost) by relay.nuxi.com (8.7.5/8.6.12) id CAA16984; Wed, 28 Aug 1996 02:41:10 -0700 (PDT) From: "David E. O'Brien" Message-Id: <199608280941.CAA16984@relay.nuxi.com> Subject: Re: Linux async vs. FreeBSD sync (fwd) To: kientzle@netcom.com Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 02:41:09 -0700 (PDT) Cc: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199608272159.OAA22646@netcom2.netcom.com> from "kientzle@netcom.com" at "Aug 27, 96 02:59:23 pm" X-PGP-Fingerprint: B7 4D 3E E9 11 39 5F A3 90 76 5D 69 58 D9 98 7A X-Pgp-Keyid: 34F9F9D5 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL22 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-ports@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > An alternative package system that I've been using successfully for several > months now is to install _every_ application in it's own private directory, > and then populate /usr/local/{lib,bin,include,man} with appropriate > symlinks. For example, I have "ispell" installed in /usr/local/app/ispell > as follows: Yuck, yuck, yuck. I used to like this idea until I had to live with one someone setup. Now in my research lab of 20 Sparcs (running a mix of Solaris and SunOS -- which was a part of the reason for the symlink idea), I *HATE IT*. Links rot, and your perl script has to be *very* carefully crafted to do the Right Thing at all times. Otherwise you get a *big* mess. Also, this has been discussed (here I belive, or maybe -chat) about 6 months ago. Didn't have too much support except for a few if I remember correctly. > > > I do have a wish list for FreeBSD, however. A packaging system similar > > > to Red Hat Linux's RPM or Debian's dpkg would be nice. ... Like what? I've used FreeBSD's packages several times to ween Linux Slackware (and others) users to FreeBSD. With the packages system, it is just too easy :-) to populate a /usr/local tree. (of course I won't go into my opinions that we should be using /usr/pkg rather than /usr/local -- that is for truely local things....) -- David (obrien@cs.ucdavis.edu)