[FreeBSD-Ports-Announce] Time to bid farewell to the old pkg_ tools

[Michel Talon]

>ports/ is not just for package addicts.  I never install packages,
>but only build & install from ports/.  sqlite junk obstructs
>/var/db/pkg being accessed by find & grep to debug breaking ports builds.

As someone who has advocated the use of sqlite to replace the old "database in the filesystem"
several years before it has been implemented by the new package system, i can only conclude, like
Matthew that you are being absurd. The old package system was total crap, incredibly slow and
using system resources in absurd ways. Sqlite obstructs nothing, you have to spend a couple of minutes
learning the basic SQL queries, which is no more difficult that learning obtuse find and grep options.
Moreover i have hard time believing one needs to dissect the package system (beyond reading the 
output of pkg info) to debug a port build. One surely needs some knowledge of make, C, perhaps C++
which is vastly more difficult than figuring how to extract the content of the sqlite database.
Finally i confess i am a package addict. Insisting that people use packages is the best way to ensure
that the ports can indeed be built and that the result works. I have spent too many hours editing
C files and makefiles in the past in the hope of getting something to build, now i want that it
"just works", like it does with the likes of Debian, etc. I am very grateful to Baptiste, Matthew and
al. to the excellent job they have done, finally FreeBSD has a decent infrastructure for 
external software. The new package system is fast, efficient, and very importantly lists all
the things it will do before doing them (like Debian apt), which allows to avoid ruining a working system,
a very common occurrence in the old package system. So it does most of the things that i thought
were necessary to come to parity with apt, and is light years ahead of the old system. 


--

Michel Talon
talon at lpthe.jussieu.fr





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