Date: Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:49:08 -1000 From: Gary Dunn <knowtree@aloha.com> To: FreeBSD-Gnome <freebsd-gnome@freebsd.org> Subject: Preparing for FreeBSD 8.0 Message-ID: <1247042948.1996.15.camel@slate01>
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I am looking ahead to the release of FreeBSD 8.0 and would appreciate advice on how to accomplish an easy installation, including Gnome. My goal is to be able to give someone a DVD with a full ports tree along with a one page written setup guide, and have them end up with a complete Gnome desktop. The last time I tried this with a 7.x release I had a problem getting Gnome to install without pulling its source code from the network, and soon after the release the ports tree was updated with a newer version of Gnome. At that point there seemed to be no (easy for me) way to offer a single disk installation. What made more sense was to install the OS from the DVD, update the ports tree, and install Gnome from the meta ports. While this seems simple to readers of this list, it is an ordeal likely to put many a newcomer off FOSS forever. I realize that to become a full-fledged FreeBSD user one must learn how to update the ports tree -- to get under the hood and get a little dirty. I would rather that be an option, and that what comes with a release will serve them well until the next release. After studying this issue some more it seems as if my goal of installing Gnome without a massive network download may be impossible. If Gnome could be installed with a command like portinstall -RP Gnome2 it might be possible, depending on how many of the required ports have pre-compiled packages. (The last time I tried pkg_add -r Gnome2 but got terrible results ... maybe I just muffed it.) Is it possible to install Gnome from the release DVD without a network connection? Even if there is a way to install from DVD, when will 2.28 hit the ports tree? When it does, is there a practical way to distribute it on disk? I guess that a compromise would be to do a full install, then copy the tarballs to a DVD and have the newcomer copy those to their distfiles directory before running the meta Port. -- Gary Dunn, Honolulu osp@aloha.com http://openslate.net/ http://e9erust.blogspot.com/ Sent from Slate001
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