portsnap base thought

[Colin Percival]

Peter Jeremy wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-Aug-27 14:16:09 -0700, Colin Percival wrote:
>>Given that portsnap currently only has about 1500-2000 users
> 
> I'd suggest that is a reasonable userbase and the sooner the portsnap
> database is on the release CDs, the quicker it will grow.

I entirely agree.

>>it doesn't seem reasonable to make major changes to how releases
>>are done yet; but assuming the usage of portsnap increases significantly
>>over the next year, this is certainly something to consider for 7.0-R.
> 
> I agree it's too late for 6.0-R but I don't see why this needs to wait
> for 7.0.  As I see it, the prerequisites are:
> - Find ~7MB additional space on -RELEASE disk 1 (probably the hardest)

Now that disk 1 doesn't contain any packages, I think this part is easy.

> - Add the tools to build /var/db/portsnap and /usr/ports/.portsnap.INDEX
>   into "make release" (and remove ports.tgz)
> - Teach sysinstall to unpack the ports tree from /var/db/portsnap (or
>   maybe just invoke portsnap)

Getting sysinstall to install /var/db/portsnap and its contents would not
be very hard, but getting a copy which corresponds to the release tag would
take a bit of work, since portsnap builds don't take any notice of CVS tags.

> I don't think any of these amount to "major changes".  The portsnap
> binaries will be in 6.0 so I don't see a serious problem with
> switching to portsnap in 6.1.

My biggest concern with doing this in a minor release is the question of
removing ports.tgz.  That tarball has been on the release CDs for an awfully
long time, and I'm sure there are people who will be quite astonished if it
suddenly disappears.

Colin Percival