FreeBSD 7.2 RC1 amd64 Installation

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 7:56 PM, Ken Smith <kensmith at cse.buffalo.edu> wrote:

> On Sat, 2009-04-18 at 19:04 -0400, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk wrote:
>
>
> I'll take this into consideration moving forward but just so you know it
> likely won't be addressed as part of 7.2-REL.  It's likely you would
> need to be at least a little more selective in what packages you install
> if you want to avoid these sorts of package install failures caused by
> conflicts.
>


(1)
During package selection if a conflict exits , the user may be warned with a
message ,
for example :

Selection of ...  requires de-selection of previously selected package(s)
                      ... ( list of packages )

In that way it is possible to make a suitable decision .
At present it is necessary to know which packages are conflicting .  During
a learning process  of FreeBSD  this causes  difficulty .

(2)
At present , only package names are listed . If it is easy and/or possible a
short description of package may be displayed in a separate pane  which
would be very helpful for selection  .
All of the descriptions are present in port related FreeBSD web site pages .
>From there short summaries may be copied .

(3)
During installation of packages a counter would be informative about
progress .
And listing of installed packages in a pane shows package dependencies and
detailed progress .

(4)
For unattended installs , when an error occurs it may be listed in another
pane and it may be appended to an error message file .
At present it is waiting a user entry for enter key pressing . Therefore ,
at present package install part requires to wait there up to completion .

(5)
In .../Latest/package_name.tbz

directory , only package names are listed .

Persons knowing FreeBSD very well can understand attributes of packages but
this is difficult at the beginning .

Over time addition of short explanatory sentences at the side of package
names increases their comprehensibility .


(6)
When a package is tried to be installed in Mandriva Linux , it is asking
Mandriva DVD if it is present in it .
Such a technique may be used for port package updates in FreeBSD .
After an installation  , later on when the user wants to install a new
package ,
pkg_add may check the update web sites .  If the package is updated there it
installs it from the update site .
If it is not updated yet and it is present in installation DVD or CD ,
pkg_add (and other update utilities also ) displays  a message like , for
example :

   install from DVD , enter D for it ,
   install from CD numbered .. , enter C for it ,
   install from update site , enter S for it .

( The user may not have DVD or CD at hand )

In that way , for many installs , FreeBSD web site traffic may be reduced
for unnecessary re-downloads .

(7)
The above ideas  may be utilized  over time  if they are found useful .
I am not expecting that they will be implemented instantly because some of
them require much work to be done ( this means time and resources ) .

Thank you very much .

Mehme Erol Sanliturk