bento and the ports system

[Kris Kennaway]

On Mon, May 31, 2004 at 05:29:38PM -0500, Jon Noack wrote:

> What I envision:
> Packages are already being built (for example, 
> http://pointyhat.freebsd.org/errorlogs/i386-packages-5-latest/).  The 
> ports system would default to using the package if available, but there 
> would be an option to always compile from source.  If the package wasn't 
> available (not yet built, NO_PACKAGE, etc.), the port would be compiled 
> from source as before.  All that is needed is to set the default 
> PACKAGESITE to the above URL (or something slightly different depending 
> on architecture/release), make packages the default, and ensure there is 
> enough bandwidth to handle the load (mirrors?).  I know security would 
> be a major consideration, but handling the load is the only technical 
> difficulty I see...

Packages on pointyhat may not always be consistent or working.
Furthermore, they may not interoperate as expected with what you have
on your own system, because ports are customized for installed
packages and build settings (e.g. building with GNOME support when you
have GNOME installed).  The packages on the FTP site are updated
periodically from a known-good build.  If you don't mind about the
limitations, you can already use these automatically with pkg_add -r
or portupgrade -P.

> P.S. The opinion on the DragonFly kernel list was that it was a good 
> idea in principle, but that the *BSD package system is very fragile.

Yes, well, everyone has an opinion about packages.

Kris
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