Flavors *COMPLETELY* break the port system (synth and poudriere are useless)

[Chris H]

On Wed, 6 Dec 2017 15:40:27 -0800 "Mel Pilgrim" <list_freebsd at bluerosetech.com> said

> On 12/5/2017 2:25 PM, Baho Utot wrote:
> > Thank you for taking a perfectly good system and breaking it as well as 
> > making it unusable, unstable.  You just don't know of all the countless 
> > hours spent after running an update and taking a week to get it working 
> > again.
> 
> I manage (currently) 104 FreeBSD systems that are a mix of 10.x and 
> 11.x, on-metal and VM.  I use freebsd-update and poudriere.  The biggest 
> issue in two years was back before I used poudriere and it was when the 
> default version postgresql change I had to upgrade databases (something 
> for which postgresql doesn't have automated tools).
> 
> The last time I had a major stability problem with FreeBSD was when I 
> had a brand new Nocona Xeon system that would get interrupt storms 
> running 5.x and had to run 6-CURRENT on it for a while because 6.x 
> introduced MSI support.
> 
> The closest thing to a FreeBSD failure after that was Perl upgrades 
> exploding all over the place because there was a time when the Ports 
> Tree didn't handle Perl upgrades gracefully.
> 
> Looking back at two years of stats, all of the unplanned uptime resets 
> are associated with hypervisor or power outages.
> 
> Experiences will vary, and it's totally fine if FreeBSD is not your cup 
> of tea, but you're out of line condemning the project as a whole because 
> your individual experience differed.
> 
> > It really helps motivate all of us users to continue to have to fix 
> > broken systems due to broken ports system and then be told how great 
> > things are, brings us so much joy and keeps our attitude positive.
> 
> I really don't know what advice to offer you other than that, from my 
> observations, there is a very high correlation between people who have 
> chronic stability problems with FreeBSD and people who insist on not 
> using the officially endorsed tools and methods.
> 
> (Cue people utterly failing to understand statistics and citing single 
> data points in 3, 2, 1...)
In all fairness, and this applies to many;
One would not make a change that breaks ABI, except on previously defined,
and allowed boundaries (specific versions). Yet pkg was effectively dropped
like a bomb. The affect of which spanned well out of the ports realm, and
spilled quite heavily into $BASE. Here, now more than 2 OS releases later,
we're still dealing with the aftermath. This caused substantial problems
for *many*. Some of whom have moved on -- even long-time supporters, and
contributors. In all fairness. Those that do not share your fairly ideal
experiences, should also have a right to express their views/experiences.
Even when you don't care to hear them. This is, after all, an open
forum/mailing list. No?
Nothing personal, Mel. Just saying. :)

--Chris