Announcing the pkgsrc-2014Q2 Release

[Alistair Crooks <agc%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

pkgsrc-2014Q2
=============
The pkgsrc team is proud to announce the availability of the
pkgsrc-2014Q2 branch.  We welcome python-3.4, as well as many new and
updated packages, a new default postgreSQL version, 9.3, and Lua
multi-version support.

Number of Packages
==================
In pkgsrc, there are:

14895 possible pkgsrc packages in pkgsrc-2014Q2
12116 pkgsrc entries as reported by lintpkgsrc (unique package Makefiles)
14254 binary packages built with gcc for NetBSD-current/x86_64
14895 binary packages built with clang for NetBSD-current/x86_64
12037 binary packages built with gcc for Joyent's SmartOS/i386
12635 binary packages built with gcc for Joyent's SmartOS/x86_64
13118 binary packages built with gcc for Linux-2.6.32/x86_64
10868 binary packages built with gcc for Darwin 10.8.0/i386
12316 binary packages built with clang for FreeBSD 10.0/x86_64

In addition, this quarter:
244 packages have been added
2 packages have been renamed
18 packages removed, 1 with a successor
1085 packages updated

Pkgsrc Release Schedule
=======================
The pkgsrc developers make a new release every three months.  We
believe that this is a sweet spot between too many updates, and
keeping abreast of issues like security vulnerabilities.  Pkgsrc is
not tied to any one operating system or architecture, which gives us
the ability to decouple the releases from any operating system
releases, and to concentrate on the packages themselves.

This is the 43rd quarterly release of pkgsrc.

Changes to pkgsrc
=================
Ryosuke Moro has greatly improved on our haskell package support. 
Many pkgsrc developers and contributors have all all helped with PR
submissions, fixes and bug reports.

By default, pkgsrc now installs fonts into share/fonts/X11 (instead of
lib/X11/fonts, which was for historical reasons). There should be no
visible change to most users, except if the fontpath has been changed.

In addition, PostgreSQL 9.3 has now been made the default version, and
Lua multi-version support has been added.

Package Additions
=================
python-3.4 and elasticsearch were added to pkgsrc, as well as python,
perl and ruby wrappers for many libraries.

Package Removals
================
We actively manage the packages in pkgsrc, and delete ones that are
not necessary.  We said goodbye to Berkeley db-4.6, Xen 2.0 and Apache
versions 1.3 and 2.0.

Pkgsrc-security
===============
One neat feature of pkgsrc is its ability to sort package versions
based on the version numbers.  It's used in audit-packages, to report
on any installed packages which may have security vulnerabilities in
them.  pkgsrc-security%pkgsrc.org@localhost maintains lists of vulnerable
packages, along with reference URLs relating to the exposure.  We
thank the whole pkgsrc-security team for their hard work.  Sample
output from audit-packages is shown below:

% audit-packages
Package python27-2.7.7nb1 has a directory-traversal vulnerability, see 
http://bugs.python.org/issue21766
%

Getting pkgsrc
==============
More information can be found in
        http://www.netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/getting.html

tar files for pkgsrc, along with checksums, can be found at
        http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/pkgsrc-2014Q2/

and anonymous cvs can be used:
        cvs -z3 -q -d anoncvs%anoncvs.NetBSD.org@localhost:/cvsroot checkout -r 
pkgsrc-2014Q2 -P pkgsrc

or by pulling from the git mirrors at:
        https://github.com/jsonn/pkgsrc
        https://github.com/joyent/pkgsrc

About pkgsrc
============
pkgsrc is a cross-platform packaging system.  It allows people to
download sources and to build and install binary packages on one or
more platforms.

Building packages from source is useful for a number of reasons:

+ not only is the provenance of source code checked (by using multiple
checksums), with pkgsrc, the version of source code you are working
with is the same that other developers and users have.

+ package builders can choose to customise their own installations by
means of the option framework.  pre-built packages from other builders
may not have specified the same options.

+ patches are maintained in a central repository, and, again, are
checked at patch application time by using digests. The patches
which are applied to the sources being built are the same ones which
are known to be used and proved by other pkgsrc users (not necessarily
on the same platform).

+ by building from source, all doubts about compilers, build practices,
source code cleanliness, and packaging differences are removed. 
Digital signatures of binary packages, while useful in themselves,
only prove certain aspects of binary package provenance. (pkgsrc has
had signed packages since 2001.)

+ it may be difficult or impossible to find a pre-built package for
the operating system or architecture.

+ a pre-built package may have further or conflicting pre-requisites,
which are themselves difficult to find or build. By building everything,
including pre-requisites, a from-source packaging system can ensure
that pre-requisites are present and integrated.

At the present time, pkgsrc supports 22 platforms:

        AIX
        BSDOS
        Cygwin
        Darwin/Mac OS X
        DragonFly
        FreeBSD
        FreeMiNT
        GNU/kFreeBSD
        HPUX
        Haiku
        IRIX
        Interix/SFU/SUA
        Linux
        Minix3
        MirBSD
        NetBSD
        OSF1
        OpenBSD
        QNX
        SCO OpenServer
        Solaris/illumos
        UnixWare

Complete dependency and pre-requisite package information is held and
used by the package management software - if packages rely on other
packages to function properly, that pre-requisite will be built,
installed and managed as part of the package installation process. 
Binary packages can be managed using pkgin.

Alistair Crooks
On behalf of the pkgsrc developers
Tue Jul  1 08:29:47 PDT 2014