DragonFly BSD
DragonFly kernel List (threaded) for 2004-05

Re: apt-get

From: Jon Noack <noackjr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 16:35:37 -0500

On 05/31/04 15:34, Bill Huey (hui) wrote:
2) Building something like KDE/GNOME is nearly impossible to do, let
alone the wait for it to finish building. I have had build literally
take days to finish and people pushing "ports" style system can't ignore
that. The world isn't fixed and it's highly desirable to run even the
latest stuff off of the CVS from those projects. I use to do it all of
the time and without problems under Debian.

I disagree with your "nearly impossible" comment. I've been using KDE from FreeBSD ports since version 2.1.x. Sure, it takes a while to compile, but I would just start the upgrade (CVSup ports tree, 'portupgrade -ar') before leaving work or going to sleep. I can't recall a time when it wasn't successfully completed by the next morning. When I didn't want to wait, I simply used the packages from the KDE/FreeBSD team (http://rabarber.fruitsalad.org/). I recognize that having packages available is the exception rather than the rule.

My completely ignorant opinion is that FreeBSD should integrate the bento build cluster (http://pointyhat.freebsd.org/) with the ports system. The ports system would default to using the package if available, but there would still be an option to always compile from source. If the package wasn't available yet, then the port would be compiled from source as before. The packages are already being built (http://pointyhat.freebsd.org/errorlogs/i386-packages-5-latest/)! All that is needed is to set the default PACKAGESITE to the above URL, make packages the default, and ensure there is enough bandwidth to handle the load. I know this requires further considerations for security and what not, but handling the load is the only technical difficulty I see...

