Is pkg quarterly really needed?

[Julian Elischer]

On 20/4/17 5:15 pm, Mathieu Arnold wrote:
> Le 20/04/2017 à 10:49, Torfinn Ingolfsen a écrit :
>> On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 8:00 AM, Kurt Jaeger <lists at opsec.eu> wrote:
>>> Hi!
>>>
>>>> On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 1:30 AM, Julian Elischer <julian at freebsd.org> wrote:
>>>>> quarterly however is broken because the pkg mirors discard it all at the
>>>>> time of update.
>>>> Do they have to?
>>>> Why couldn't pkg mirrors keep say, the four latest quarterly sets
>>>> all the time?
>>> Because the URL for the latest quarterly is one stable URL.
>> Obviously this has to be changed. As I wrote:
>> "No extra work involved once the setup is configured and tested".
>> So yes, there is some work needed, but it would be a one-time job.
>>
>> If anyone has any real arguments as to why the FreeBSD project can't
>> do it this way, let's hear them.
>> HTH
>
> I am not exactly sure what you are asking for, to keep the previous, not
> updated, quarterly package repositories ? say, in latest-1 latest-2
> latest-3... ?
>
>
> What purpose would that serve ? I mean, they would not be updated.

exactly! that's what is often needed...  something that is not updated..
having spent 20 years embedding FreeBSD into products I can tell you 
that the commercial reality is a requirement for FROZEN (or near to 
it) contents. not contents changing all the time. ports/pkgs that need 
to be updated for security reasons are the exception, not the rule. 
And since handling a security issue usually required extra paperwork 
anyhow, they are usually handled in a different workflow.

here's a workflow I'd find less annoying.. or something similar:

quarterly snapshot into .../quarterly/$DATE/initial/All/
    this never changes again. it is a snapshot of the head set of 
patches at that time. no recomipiles needed.
an additional directory: .../quarterly/$DATE/updating/All...
     all files in 'updating' start out as symlinks to 
../../initial/All/$filename and are replaced if the files get updated.
    ( or if name changes.. maybe we get a choice of two)
For the people who want to leap from quarterly to quarterly we have a
symlink from "quarterly/Latest" to $DATE/updating/ and  from 
quarterly/Initial to $DATE/initial

Each quarter  a new set is created with new dates, and the symlinks 
are recreated.
also create in each real directory, a file that contains the (possibly 
relative) URL so we know what to point our pkg.cfg at if we don't want 
to follow the rolling version.

how long you leave the old ones there is up to you, but someone 
mirroring might decide to leave them for ever if they had the space.
but at least leave them for a whole quarter...





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