Why Are You NOT Using FreeBSD?

[Paul Mather]

On Jun 2, 2012, at 2:56 PM, Chris Nehren wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 02, 2012 at 14:11:06 -0400 , Paul Mather wrote:
>> I'm not sure what the solution is for the end user.  I know I get
>> somewhat leery of updating my ports if I see a large number of changes
>> coming via portsnap (like the 4000+ that accompanied the recent libpng
>> upgrade) and there is nothing new in UPDATING (which, happily wasn't
>> the case with the libpng upgrade).  Usually, I wait a while for the
>> dust to clear and an UPDATING entry potentially to appear.
> 
> If you're concerned about things breaking, don't follow the bleeding
> edge. This seems to be common sense.

Unfortunately, unlike the base operating system, which has -CURRENT, -STABLE, and -RELEASE, there is no well-defined "bleeding edge" in the case of ports.  (Although there is a strong case to be made that it is analogous to -CURRENT.)  So, as I said above, you have to fall back on heuristics to determine when it is best to update (with the caveat that waiting too long to update can also be as troublesome as updating too quickly).  Certainly, it's far from a case of "read UPDATING and you'll be okay," as someone in this thread was seeming to imply.

NetBSD's pkgsrc has a nice feature: the quarterly package branches.  These follow a quarterly release cycle and receive only security updates.  It makes pkgsrc more akin to -CURRENT and -STABLE (or -RELEASE) instead of just -CURRENT.

>> Maybe the solution is to track the freebsd-ports mailing list get get
>> advanced warning of large changes, but that would mean following
>> another high-volume list. :-(
> 
> And any decent mailer setup can filter those messages for you, leaving
> only the messages relevant to ports you're interested in. There are also
> systems like gmane which provide an NNTP feed for mailing lists.
> Combined with a newsreader with good killfile / scoring features, it
> shouldn't be hard to keep up.


Probably not, but then again you're still relying on it breaking for someone else (and thereby being reported) to avoid it breaking for you. :-)

I'm not saying these are insurmountable problems, and, in my experience, most of the time ports updates go smoothly.  But, it can present more of a challenge for those that are running an individual FreeBSD system (as their desktop/laptop system, say), and especially if they are using non-default port options in the ports they install, as these don't get the benefit of widespread testing.

Cheers,

Paul.