Welcome flavors! portmaster now dead? synth?

[Roger Marquis]

Jonathan Chen wrote:
>Thomas Mueller <mueller6722 at twc.com> wrote:
>> I can still see possible use for portmaster in that something has to
>be used to build synth or poudriere from source.
>You don't need portmaster for that. You just need make(1).

This is what we do plus a few extras to share the resulting ports across
systems:

  * instead of 'make install' use 'make package && pkg add' like
    OpenBSD

  * the package directory is updated with each new package
    'cd /usr/ports/packages/All && pkg repo'

  * the resulting repo is shared across jails using null mounts and/or
    across hosts using apache or nginx

This has certain benefits over poudriere:

  * KIS

  * it is straightforward to update only ports with security
    vulnerabilities

  * works seamlessly in a jail, with or without zfs

  * requires less cpu and disk

On the downside:

  * haven't yet automated the entire process (pkg audit ; make
    package ; (pkg add ; service restart))

  * base cannot (yet) be updated this way even on hosts/jails with
    packaged base

  * 'pkg audit' is not as up-to-date or reliable as the same
    functionality on Linux (tor, for example, has been vulnerable since
    12/1, had an updated Makefile since 12/2, yet there is still no
    mention of it in vuxml, 3 days and one 'cd security/vuxml;make
    newentry' later)

FWIW,
Roger Marquis