The cost of a source based package system

[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

On Thursday 08 September 2011 11:53:28 Stefan Schaeckeler wrote:
> Hi all, please don't take this posting too serious. I was just curious ...

your are talking about a serious problem.
> 
> Using source based ports is with almost 5 US cents 6.19 times (case 1 vs case 2a) or 1.73 times (case 1 vs case 2b) more expensive than using binary packages :)

Yes, but:

You are moving the cost from you to the the hosting companies. If more people use packages, they will need more capacity to supply all the different variants.

Does anybody know what takes more capacity? The sources or the binaries? I would believe that the sources would take more space and bandwidth but the different variants of the binaries could be much bigger at the end.

I remember some articles about the electricity bill Google gets every month. It is not that low.

So, to paint a more complete picture, we must see both sides of the fence.

To make matters worse, people like me do both. I upgrade via the packages and then compile while I am already able to work with the new ports. At least, if the packages worked.

At the end, we who want to go green have to stop using the Internet and go back to postal services as it costs less energy.

Erich
> 
> 
> - Stefan
> 
> 
> 
> Details:
> 
> Price: 1 kw*h = 10 US cent.
> 
> Kill-a-Watt trick: by setting the price per kw to $9.999 (= $10), I could get one more digit of accuracy for the consumed energy by dividing the price by 10.
> 
> HW: Sony vaio pcg-k23 laptop (pentium 4, 2,8 GHz, huge display). Booted into FreeBSD, it consumes around 40 Watt ("idle"). When compiling programs, the power consumption doubles to somewhat above 80 Watt. Internet connection 768kb/s.
> 
> SW: Installed 259 ports via this script:
> --- snip ---
> date
> for i in /usr/ports/x11/xorg-minimal\
>          /usr/ports/x11/xorg-apps\
>          /usr/ports/x11/xorg-cf-files\
>          /usr/ports/x11/xorg-docs\
>          /usr/ports/x11/xorg-libraries\
>          /usr/ports/shells/bash3\
>          /usr/ports/print/teTeX\
>          /usr/ports/editors/emacs\
>          /usr/ports/editors/joe2\
>          /usr/ports/multimedia/xmms\
>          /usr/ports/multimedia/ffmpeg\
>          /usr/ports/lang/clisp\
>          /usr/ports/lang/hugs\
>          /usr/ports/lang/swi-pl\
>          /usr/ports/lang/llvm-gcc4\
>          /usr/ports/lang/gnat\
>          /usr/ports/lang/Gofer\
>          /usr/ports/x11-toolkits/tk86
> do
> cd $i && yes o | make install clean
> done
> date
> halt -p
> --- snip ---
>  
> Similarly, 246 binary packages have been installed via pkg_add -r.
> 
> pkg_delete /var/db/pkg/*
> rm -rf /usr/ports/distfiles/
> 
> PACKAGESITE=ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-8-stable/Latest/
> export PACKAGESITE
> 
> --- snip ---
> date
> for i in xorg-minimal\
>          xorg-apps\
>          xorg-cf-files\
>          xorg-docs\
>          xorg-libraries\
>          bash3\
>          teTeX\
>          emacs\
>          joe2\
>          xmms\
>          ffmpeg\
>          clisp\
>          hugs\
>          swi-pl\
>          llvm-gcc4\
>          gnat\
>          Gofer\
>          tk86
> do
> pkg_add -r $i
> done
> date
> halt -p
> --- snip ---
> 
> 
> The number of ports and binary packages varies slightly. I don't know why. This only introduces a small error.
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-ports at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-ports-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
> 
>