Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 21:13:22 +0100 From: martinko <martinkov@pobox.sk> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Ports vs. Gentoo Portage (a matter of concept) Message-ID: <dsav13$99q$1@sea.gmane.org> In-Reply-To: <43E8A7B3.3090707@meijome.net> References: <200602071149.31772.mailings.freebsd@o0l0o.org> <43E88C64.40007@xs4all.nl> <43E8A7B3.3090707@meijome.net>
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Norberto Meijome wrote: > Hans Nieser wrote: > >>FreeBSD Prospect wrote: >> >>>Hi, >>> >>>Reading a lot about FreeBSD recently made me really curious. I know, >>>that the founder of Gentoo (the well known GNU/Linux >>>meta-distribution, which is also based on compiling everything from >>>source) was using FreeBSD for some time, before continuing creating >>>Gentoo, what's why portage (the Gentoo software management system) is >>>generally based on FreeBSD's ports. >> >>[.. comparison of ports/portage features ..] >> >>I've been running Gentoo on my desktop computer for a few months and >>FreeBSD on my laptop / server machines. > > > I've been using linux since '95 and freebsd since '98 (more heavily (98% > of boxen) since 02)...and I have to say that after using it in > production environment, RHE is quite painful to go back to (rpms too > limiting,etc,etc) *NOT* trying to flame, just stating my POV .I have to > say that Gentoo is definitely an improvement on all that, and I use it > in my PVR box (since linux has better support for the hardware :-( ) > > >>What I am especially fond of in >>portage is the USE-flags and the way you can specify then globally and >>individually for each package and how you can get a nice, short overview >>of which USE-flags a package uses and which of them are enabled with >>"emerge -pv port". And also how you can find their descriptions without >>having to dig through Makefiles (although that's becoming less >>intimidating for me now that I have been using FreeBSD for half a year >>or so). > there are global USE-flags in FreeBSD too and you also can configure ports individually, but i'd agree that Gentoo way is more transparent. > > you can use pkgtools.conf and the port* tools, you can define variables > based on regular expressions (i.e., I have * => [ WITHOUT_IPV6=true] , > so no port* enables IPV6. Works quite well. Again, once you have a > version of the port that works well for you, just make a package from > your installed files and keep a copy of that ;-) > > > *built with portinstall / portupgrade , NOT via the (cd > /usr/ports/[category]/[portdir]/make process... make uses > /etc/make.conf...but this method definitively lacks the granularity of > pkgtools.conf. > i already raised the following issue with pkgtools.sonf here on MLs some time ago but i didn't get a response i'd be happy with: i want to make sure that a certain port will be compiled with a certain make argument/flag. there are MAKE_ARGS in port tools but these are used/applied differently depending on whether the port is compiled directly or indirectly via a metaport and also if it's being compiled for the 1st time or again. :-(( > B > besides, i should say i'm using mainly FreeBSD and occasionally i'm playing with Gentoo but i consider the quality and stability of ports provided to be (much) better than that of apps via portage. also, syncing and updating portage tree is much more heavy (by which i mean it takes much longer and downloads much more data) than updating ports collection (especially since portsnap has appeared). not to mention that Gentoo's system/base layout is still heavy evolving and frequent changes to the format, contents and location of their /etc files are happening quite so often, which wouldn't make any admin too happy. martin
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