FreeBSD Update is the binary update solution [Re: HEADS UP: Release schedule for 2006]

[Peter Jeremy]

On Thu, 2005-Dec-22 13:17:30 -0800, Jo Rhett wrote:
>But FreeBSD Update suffers from all of the same limitations that I've been
>describing because of lack of integration with the Core OS.
>
>1. modified kernels are foobar
>  ..yet are practically mandatory on production systems
>
>2. modified sources are foobar
>  ..yet many common production situations require source compilation options

So you want to be able to make arbitrary changes you your source code
and compilation options and then expect the FreeBSD project to provide
a tool that will apply binary fixes to the resultant executables?

I don't know that modified kernels are mandatory.  A lot of work has
been going on to reduce the need to re-compile the kernel for common
situations.  Likewise, I don't know that "many common" and "require"
go together - IMHO, 'desire' or 'would be nice' are more appropriate
descriptions.  Would you care to provide some details of what you
believe can be done to reduce your need to re-compile the OS.

I'm not sure that FreeBSD Update is totally unusable for you.  If you
have the situation where you have a modified FreeBSD that you need to
roll out to a large number of hosts, you just need to have your own
FreeBSD Update server - you test the changes in your environment and
then roll them out as you require.

AFAIK, Colin hasn't fully productised FreeBSD Update to date but has
not rejected the idea of doing so.

>3. FreeBSD Update can't handle updates of jails and other situations that
>package systems deal with just fine.

I don't run jails so I'm not familiar with the problems here.  Maybe you'd
like to explain the problems you run into.

-- 
Peter Jeremy