[HEADSUP] pkg(8) is now the only package management tool

[Paul Mather]

On Sep 3, 2014, at 8:28 AM, Daniel Braniss <danny at cs.huji.ac.il> wrote:

> 
> On Sep 3, 2014, at 1:40 PM, Daniel Kalchev <daniel at digsys.bg> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On 03.09.14 13:28, Michelle Sullivan wrote:
>>> 
>>>> We will have to live with it. WhateverHat is not better.
>>> I can't comment on that - the entire org runs *Hat, I've spent the last
>>> 3 years showing the benefits of *BSD and now I feel completely betrayed
>>> because there is no chance of them changing, "You see it's not an
>>> Enterprise OS"...
>> 
>> FreeBSD is a toolkit, not a "product" (ok, it's a product if you look for toolkit). It is an very good toolkit to build UNIX-like systems and many enterprises use it. Some do wonders with it, some, disasters. As with any good toolkit, there is an entire ecosystem for support built around it. FreeBSD also works out of the box but we are clearly not discussing this here.
>> 
>> I understand your effort and frustration --  everyone who has dealt with BSD UNIX has come to face it -- the media was instructed to praise/blame Linux (out of topic why) and the mainstream "me too" crowd is embracing it easier.. When most of the people who come to interviews answer "I know Windows or Linux" your management does not have much choice.
>> Back in their days of glory, Cisco had very interesting marketing strategy: "Never compete with anyone head to head -- the other party can always optimize for the bench case. Instead, work with the user to build and list of their requirements... and at the end see your product is the only one that matches". Helps :)
> 
> hi all,
> sorry to barge in :-),  but since I have been trying to upgrade my /usr/local now for a few days, 
> and counting, I tend to understand Michelle’s frustration, I also understand that managing a ports
> distribution is not for the weak hearted. 
> 
> Here is my story:
> before I updated the ports via portsnap, I made sure the tree was clean, i.e.,  ran 
> 	pkg check -Ba
> and
> 	portmaster -dvga
> and all was ok.
> 
> upgraded ports,  ran portmaster ports-mgmt/pkg,
> and now, since that day I am running
> 	portmaster -dvga
> and hand fixing issues.
> 
> all this in a non production environment - learned from past experiences.
> btw, we have several hundred computers, most of them desktops running Linux, but
> all the servers run FreeBSD.
> 
> Basically, I dread the day I run portsnap fetch update

Fairly recently, there was launched a "stable" ports branch.  This is 
updated quarterly, and seems akin to the quarterly releases of pkgsrc 
in that the given branch receives only security updates after it is 
created.  It appears to be fairly low-key.  I remember seeing an 
announcement on several FreeBSD mailing lists about its initial 
release, but haven't seen anything since (even though I believe it is 
now in its second quarter, at least).

My question is this: does anyone have experience of tracking ports via 
these branches?  Does it work well?  I can see that it would be 
advantageous to those wanting less frequent churn.  I wonder, though, 
whether it doesn't just postpone the headaches to a quarterly basis, 
when the next branch is made.  It would seem that all the churn would 
come all at once.  Some people recommend not going too long between 
ports updates because there's an increasing probability something will 
fail to update the longer you wait.  Is a quarter just right in terms 
of time?

I don't believe the "stable" ports branches are completely like the 
pkgsrc quarterly releases.  As far as I know, the pkgsrc quarterly 
releases are a chosen subset of the regular pkgsrc rolling release 
version, whereas the "stable" ports branch is a snapshot of ports at a 
given time.  I don't know what measures are taken to ensure that one 
version of the "stable" ports branch can upgrade to the next "stable" 
ports branch.  Is it left as an exercise for the reader to pore through 
/usr/ports/UPDATING and work out what is needed to be fixed by hand?

This is not intended to be a slight on the "stable" ports branches.  I 
just want to solicit feedback from people who have actually been using 
it, to determine how successfully it works in practice.

Cheers,

Paul.