portmaster new development

[David Gessel]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: portmaster new development
From: LuMiWa via freebsd-ports <freebsd-ports at freebsd.org>
To: freebsd-ports at freebsd.org
Date: 2020-12-27 02:00+0300

> On Sun, 27 Dec 2020 11:16:23 +0100
> Michael Grimm <trashcan at ellael.org> wrote:
> 
>> Matthias Apitz <guru at unixarea.de> wrote:
>>> El día domingo, diciembre 27, 2020 a las 09:22:42a. m. +0100, Kurt
>>> Jaeger escribió:
>>
>>>> That works as well. I have a checkout of the ports tree, use
>>>> make config to define non-default port options. This stores the
>>>> selected OPTIONs in /var/db/ports/, and poudriere uses those
>>>> options just fine.
>>
>>> Re/ the options, I copy them into the jail with something like this
>>> procedure:
>>>
>>> # cd /usr/ports/mail/mutt
>>> # make config
>>>
>>> # mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/freebsd-head-options/mail_mutt
>>> # cp /var/db/ports/mail_mutt/options
>>> /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/freebsd-head-options/mail_mutt
>>>
>>> 'freebsd-head' is the name of the poudriere jail (I have some of
>>> them) and the ports options stay there, as well the make.conf
>>> options in /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/freebsd-head-make.conf
>>
>>
>> I am following stable, and my jail's name has been set to stable.
>>
>> All of poudriere's settings/configs are kept in:
>>
>> 	/usr/local/etc/poudriere.d
>>
> 
> The subject is 'portmaster new development' but again start pushing
> poudriere to FreeBSD users. I do not use zfs file system and I do not
> use poudriere and I do not want to use on my computer for building some
> ports and then spending hours and hours with poudriere with not enough
> machine. For me is portmaster perfect as is now.
> 
> 
> 


I have to agree, portmaster works for certain user cases where poudriere doesn't, like mine.  The answer seems to be just (buy) a high end machine and dedicate it to build with lots of RAM, high end CPU's, and a big ZFS array with the right combination of SSDs etc and it is fast and stable!

While I'm sure that's true, that's not consistent with everyone's environment.  I'm reminded of many client-server applications that are developed by people on gigabit fiber and seem to consider the "edge" case of the rest of the world on spotty internet not worthy of consideration, complaints merely whiny carping by people who should just lift their internet up by the bootstraps.

I've run a server with a set of jails providing services for about 20 years.  Maintaining them with portsnap and portmaster works and is efficient and functional and an efficient and practical use of the compute resources I have.

Adding new and potentially better tools has been a pleasure of the community, but abandoning users always going to create friction and dismissing another's use case as "doing it wrong" is a great way to create animosity and dysfunction.

The first wave of poudriereism was very annoying and offputting, but in the last year I've been delighted by the excellent and very responsive work of port maintainers to resolve issues quickly and cleanly and those of us still doing it the "old way" can still do so successfully.  It'll be annoying and a little disruptive to lose the excellent tool that portsnap has been all these years, truly one of the brilliant, focused, and tremendously useful tools in the FreeBSD kit, but we'll figure out how to keep things working.