new package system proposal

[Chris Whitehouse]

Polytropon wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:25:13 +0100, Chris Whitehouse <cwhiteh at onetel.com> wrote:
>> Is there a quick way to find out how big are the tarballs without 
>> downloading them all or adding them up one by one?
> 
> I think it's possible to obtain an FTP ls listing and then use
> awk to get the column with the size (in bytes) and add them,
> printing the final result and maybe converting it into MB, GB
> if needed.

It's in <port>/distinfo:

chrisw at pcbsd% grep SIZE distinfo
SIZE (vlc-0.8.6i.tar.bz2) = 11786172

> 
>> Would anyone want a five year old package?
> 
> Yes, I would, because today's packages are sooo slooow. :-)

Well my disk space estimate was way high, I didn't allow for the fact 
that not all packages would be upgraded each cycle, therefore the disk 
space requirement would be less. So maybe 500gb would do 10 years. Do 
you think you will be using 10 year old packages? By then you will have 
freecycled a computer that will run relatively newer apps.

> 
> 
>> I did wonder if it would make sense to just use the PBI system. The 
>> number of packages depends to some extent on individuals volunteering to 
>> make and maintain them - true FreeBSD style.
> 
> Allthough I prefer the traditional and well intended ways, I could
> live with PBI as long as there's an automated way to install them,
> read: command line, ability for batch processing. I simply don't
> want to waste time for "Next, next, okay, next, next, next, reboot." :-)

It's very easy actually. A widget, if so configured, tells you when 
there is an update for a PBI. You select it and click ok and that's 
about it. Reboot? This is not Windoze you know! :0