Date: Fri, 2 Sep 2011 11:24:16 +0200 (CEST) From: Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de> To: freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Ports system quality Message-ID: <201109020924.p829OGAG000943@lurza.secnetix.de> In-Reply-To: <20110902010937.12d07e77@gumby.homeunix.com>
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(Not replying to any particular post in this thread.)
I think the current ports system in FreeBSD is not bad.
Sure, it could be better (but this would probably require
more manpower, which is a problem in a volunteer project),
but it also could be a *lot* worse.
I know of several people who are typical "release users".
They install a FreeBSD release from CD/DVD and use the ports
or packages that came with that release. Usually that works
very well because of the testing during the ports freeze
that happens in preparation for every release. They never
update (or maybe only when there are serious security issues)
and happily keep using those very ports until they update to
a newer release, one or two (or more) years later.
The other extreme are people who run a cron job every night
that updates /usr/ports (*) and runs "400.status-pkg" (from
/etc/periodic/weekly), possibly even followed by an automated
update (**). Of course this will sometimes break. That's
normal and to be expected, because the ports collection is
changed and modified constantly by many people, except during
freeze. There is always something that's broken. If you're
affected, you need to postpone the update of the respective
ports until someone (possibly including yourself) unbreaks it.
That's the price to pay when you want to be on the "bleeding
edge" instead of waiting for the next freeze and updating the
ports to the release tag only.
Personally, on my workstation at home I make a complete update
every few months (2 to 4 times a year). If there are any
security vulnerabilities reported by portaudit, I update the
affected ports immediately, of course.
(By the way, I use neither portupgrade nor portmaster, but a
self-made script. However, portmaster really isn't that bad
and should work fine for most users. :-)
Finally, I recommend to install ports-mgmt/pkg_cutleaves and
run it regularly after updates. It helps removing ports that
you don't need. Rule of thumb: The less ports you have, the
less dependencies exist, so updates will be less complex, and
you're less likely to be affected by breakage. With that in
mind, I keep the ports count on my workstation on a moderate
level:
$ pkg_info | wc -l
559
Best regards
Oliver
(*) For example:
http://www.secnetix.de/olli/scripts/ports-check-update
(**)
http://www.secnetix.de/olli/scripts/ports-update-list
--
Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M.
Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606, Geschäftsfuehrung:
secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün-
chen, HRB 125758, Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart
FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd
"If you think C++ is not overly complicated, just what is a protected
abstract virtual base pure virtual private destructor, and when was the
last time you needed one?"
-- Tom Cargil, C++ Journal
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