disk space needs for source based system and ports?

[Mark Millard]

[This derives from the thread starting with:
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-toolchain/2017-March/002780.html
]

Thomas Mueller mueller6722 at twc.com wrote on Tue Mar 28 08:10:44 UTC 2017 :

> This raises the question, how much diskspace is required or advised for a full
> FreeBSD installation if both the base system and ports are built from source?

I've only ever built a very small portion of all the ports. There are
10s of thousands of ports as I understand. (I've not tried to count
them.) In the environment with the most ports I'v got 331 ports built.
(I've had  more in the past.)

[You do not mention if you are only interested in one TARGET_ARCH
(such as amd64) or multiple/all of them.]

Someone may be able to answer for how space is managed on official
FreeBSD build servers.

Various ports that I've built or tried to build were very dependent
on the configuration (build options, compile options, etc.) for how big
they end up being. Some fail to build at all with WITH_DEBUG= : bugzilla
206279 is about www/webkit-qt5 running into a file size limit and
aborting: ar does not allow > 4 GiByte archives.

Also I tend to leave the /usr/obj/ ports subtrees around uncleaned so
that I have access to source and such if problems show up. (I clean
before building, not after.) This uses large amounts of space.

Environment with 331 ports: about  73 GiByte used
Environment with 107 ports: about 227 GiBytes used

But that last has the devel/llvm40 build with WITH_DEBUG= used based
on a standard /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.ports.mk file. Just the related
/usr/obj/ content for that is about 118 GiBytes and the installed
llvm40 materials are about 49 GiBytes for the specific configuration:
so about 167 GiBytes for llvm40 as I have tend to build things.

[If I remember right I also thought at the time that webkit-qt5 used
the WITH_DEBUG on its own independently of FreeBSD and so defining
it for FreeBSD caused more than intended. I could have been wrong
about this. I stopped using such and so have not tried again. Still
I wish FreeBSD had piked something less likely to have potential
conflicts/less-generic, say, possibly, FBSD_WITH_DEBUG.]

> Some messages in this thread have raised the possibility of needing 49 to over
> 100 GB, which is much more than I have allotted.

If your goals allow avoiding WITH_DEBUG= that will help greatly because
some ports turn into massive things built that way.

So would building with clean-up after each port is built.

> Also, what about space for a local repository when using synth for ports?

I've never used synth and most environments that I use are not supported
by synth. So I'm unlikely to use it.

I've only done a few poudriere-devel experiments and none of my
environments are based on it (so far).

> I could run out of space on some of my partitions but could make a much bigger
> separate partition if necessary, 500 GB or more.

Without more detail on what is to be built with what build
options and the like I doubt you will get a detailed figure.

Also you give no hint that would help judge how long the builds
might take. I've been told of people letting personal(?) machines
run for weeks/months on end.

> If this question diverges from the proper thread topic, feel free to change the
> subject line and respond to freebsd-ports if that is more appropriate, so I
> won't be accused of hijacking this thread.

Done.

===
Mark Millard
markmi at dsl-only.net