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Date:      Fri, 12 May 2000 09:49:12 -0700
From:      Matthew Hunt <mph@astro.caltech.edu>
To:        Bart Lateur <bart.lateur@skynet.be>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: About the "ports"
Message-ID:  <20000512094912.A44323@wopr.caltech.edu>
In-Reply-To: <3923e743.8641020@relay.skynet.be>; from bart.lateur@skynet.be on Fri, May 12, 2000 at 11:37:38AM %2B0000
References:  <3923e743.8641020@relay.skynet.be>

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On Fri, May 12, 2000 at 11:37:38AM +0000, Bart Lateur wrote:

> First of all, I've already installed a few apps, and most of the ports I
> have on my local system (in /usr/ports/), are already out of date. So I
> have doubts if it's any use for keeping a rather complete ports tree on
> disk at all?

As others have said, you should use cvsup to keep your ports
collection up-to-date.

> Second: why are the ports distributed as a subtree with lots of small
> files? That doesn't make sense. Downloading the files for a port from

Everyone else seems to have misunderstood your point here.  You're
talking about downloading the Ports Collection, not the stuff you need
to build the port once you have it (i.e. the distfiles), right?

Most FTP servers, including ftp.freebsd.org, support on-the-fly
tar archiving.  You can "cd /pub/FreeBSD/ports" and "get ports.tar"
and get one huge tar file:

> /usr/ports/databases/postgresql.tar.gz . One fetch, you have your port.
> untar and ungzip, and you're ready to install. 

ftp ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/ports/databases/postgresql.tar

...

150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for 'postgresql.tar'.
226 Transfer complete.
73728 bytes received in 0.52 seconds (138.37 KB/s)
221 Goodbye!

> Small files waste a lot of disk space (say, 32k of disk space for a file
> of 200 bytes). That way I'm not surprised that the ports tree takes

UNIX filesystems are designed to handle small files efficiently.
The allocation unit is tunable, typically 512 or 1024 bytes, and
does not automatically get bigger for bigger disks.

Matt

-- 
Matthew Hunt <mph@astro.caltech.edu> * Science rules.
http://www.pobox.com/~mph/           *


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