Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 08:17:38 +1100 From: Rowdy <david@fielden.com.au> To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: ports or packages? Message-ID: <4027F8F2.6090506@fielden.com.au>
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Greetings, I downloaded and successfully installed FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE a while back, it has been running flawlessly ever since. Due to the speed of my Internet connection at home, it is trying for me to download the files required during the installation of ports, so I downloaded all the packages for 5.1 at work (where the Internet connection is not much better, but at least I can leave downloads running overnight and all weekend). After more reading, I have concieved a desire to upgrade a couple of applications, including doing a cvsup, however that would appear to require the source and patches that the installation of ports would have provided. Consequently I am wondering whether anyone else has wrestled with this, and whether it is actually a good idea to grab large groups of packages and keep a fairly static system (in the way of updates), or to have more patience and let the sources and patches download. My reasoning for the latter is that unless there is a significant version increase, it would only be necessary to download (or to have cvsup download for me) much smaller incremental patches to ports rather than downloading an entire new package. The only other downside is the compile time, but I did compile the J2SDK and I don't imagine there would be too many apps larger than that! The optimisation of applications does not concern me too much, and I rarely if ever need any options that are not compiled into the packages. So, has anyone else gone down this road, did you switch from packages to ports (with a 56K dialup Internet connection), how did you fare, and did you encounter any problems? tia Dave
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