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Date:      Thu, 13 Dec 2007 02:48:07 -0800
From:      Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Tuomo Valkonen <tuomov@iki.fi>
Cc:        freebsd-ports@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Ion3 license violation
Message-ID:  <20071213104807.GA96970@eos.sc1.parodius.com>
In-Reply-To: <slrnfm2293.7a5.tuomov@jolt.modeemi.cs.tut.fi>
References:  <slrnflv4hj.ge8.tuomov@jolt.modeemi.cs.tut.fi> <20071212080932.GA30438@soaustin.net> <slrnflv6nd.k6f.tuomov@jolt.modeemi.cs.tut.fi> <20071212083658.GA31114@soaustin.net> <47602AC8.7060609@csub.edu> <476030F0.50501@csub.edu> <20071212142045.de0dcc7e.wmoran@potentialtech.com> <slrnfm0fd5.l9t.tuomov@jolt.modeemi.cs.tut.fi> <20071213095657.GT11310@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> <slrnfm2293.7a5.tuomov@jolt.modeemi.cs.tut.fi>

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On Thu, Dec 13, 2007 at 10:27:47AM +0000, Tuomo Valkonen wrote:
> On 2007-12-13, Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au> wrote:
> > In general, FreeBSD only distributes third-party packages in binary format.
> 
> Umm.. the ports system is primarily source-based, and you distribute the
> sources.
)
This is primarily false, but there is a piece of truth to it.  Let's
talk about source-based installs first.

When someone installs a port (cd /usr/ports/whatever && make), the
tarball to the source of the application is downloaded via HTTP or FTP
from whatever set of URLs are included in the Makefile as the source
location.

In the case that all the URLs return errors/time out/fail, there's a
fallback mechanism that can be used (it's not necessarily used in every
port, however!) where the source tarball is fetched from a "master"
FreeBSD FTP server: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/
or something along those lines.

That FTP server can have a locally mirrored copy of the source tarball.

Now, moving on to binary installs (what FreeBSD calls "packages"):

Binary packages are pre-compiled binaries which are installed on
the users' system -- there is no source downloaded.  A lot of users
prefer this method since they just have to do "pkg_add someport" and
voila, the binary is on their system and away they go.  Binary
packages are downloaded (by default) from a "master" FreeBSD FTP
server, unless overriden.  The FTP path differs depending upon which
FreeBSD version they're using; for RELENG_6, for example, it's this:

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6-stable/Latest/

I believe Mark removed the source tarball from the "master" FreeBSD FTP
server, and very likely removed the binary packages as well.

Does this help you understand things a bit better?

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                    jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                           http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                      Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.                  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |




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