FreeBSD is really great.. BUT..

[Matthew Seaman]

On 03/19/14 10:34, Martin Braun wrote:
> The binary packages on FreeBSD are compiled with so few options available
> that you end up compiling the whole bunch from source anyway!
> 
> A simple setup on a mailserver with Postfix, Dovecot, MySQL, and a couple
> of other packages doesn't work using the binary packages because they are
> NOT compiled to fit together!
> 
> Now.. what the "¤"%"#!"!¤ is the point then!? Why don't we just forget
> about binary packages in FreeBSD and make everyone compile?

Because we're in a state of transition at the moment.  We have not yet
completely obsoleted the old pkg_tools (soon though...), so there are
changes to the ports tree we cannot make just yet.  pkg(8) itself is
right now in the process of growing a much more sophisticated solver,
which will mean much more intelligence about constructing dependency
trees based on the capabilities and requirements of the available
packages, rather than the RUN_DEPENDS settings pulled from the ports tree.

Yes, it's frustrating at the moment since we're in a half-way house
between the old-style ports and the regime where binary packages
basically 'just work' for the vast majority of users.  (It's likely that
there will always be people who want odd combinations of options who
will be best advised to compile their own, but ideally they should be
few and far between.)

The best user experience at the moment seems to be for people building
packages using poudriere (or similar) and running their own repo to
distribute them.  But that's just at the moment, and could well change
pretty soon.

	Cheers,

	Matthew





-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 1029 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20140319/a07a385b/attachment.sig>