portsnap

[Edward Sanford Sutton, III]

On 12/28/20 6:06 PM, Thomas Mueller wrote:
>> Kudos to Stefan for keeping portmaster relevant and up-to-date.
>> But I never understood the appeal of portsnap. What's the advantage over
>
>> svnlite co ...
>> cd /usr/ports; make update
>
>> This mechanism is in the base system, so an extra tool demands some
>> justification ;-)
portsnap was much faster for small updates and slower for big updates
last I tested it though I've heard it was the exact opposite for other's
experiences. I found svn always had a certain overhead to run through my
tree to make sure it was in sync where portsnap just said, "yup,
snapshot up to date/needs these few changes" much quicker than my system
could even walk a ports tree. Once months of changes are there I would
have been better off with a fresh fetch effort I presume but doing the
usual update was SLOW. If you want to just have a ports tree and have no
intention of modifying it, tracking said changes, and/or submitting
those patches back, or if you want to have the most up to date copy of
the ports tree, download a copy from a specific changeset or moment in
time, or if you want to downgrade certain ports then I think portsnap
has always been the wrong choice.

>> Kind regards,
>> Patrick
>
>> punkt.de GmbH
>> Patrick M. Hausen
>
> Better yet, I built the full subversion from FreeBSD ports and NetBSD
pkgsrc so am able to use from either FreeBSD or NetBSD.
>
> But the useful days of svnlite or svn with FreeBSD with ports tree
seem to end with the migration to git scheduled for the end of next
March; already ended for FreeBSD doc and current src trees.

portsnap didn't have an upload and svn won't disappear from read only
view anytime soon; legacy FreeBSD support doesn't want that dying off
until their versions last using it die off too.

> I guess svnlite will be dropped from FreeBSD when it will no longer be
usable.
>
> Any way portsnap can be updated to deal with a git repository?

portsnap doesn't deal with a svn repository but uses its own effort to
track changes if I recall. I didn't think the reason for going away was
svn vs git. portsnap is a shell script where fetch is used for downloads.

> I switched from portsnap to subversion following FreeBSD's switch from
csup to subversion for security reasons in summer 2012 (to the best of
my memory).
>
> I figured if I needed subversion to update src and doc trees, may as
well also use it with ports tree: one-stop shopping.
>
> Tom
>
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