Announcing the pkgsrc-2014Q3 Release

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

pkgsrc-2014Q3
=============
The pkgsrc team is proud to announce the availability of the
pkgsrc-2014Q3 branch.  We welcome gcc-4.9 packages, say hello to
snobol again, note that some R packages have moved within pkgsrc to
better reflect their functionality, and X11 on netbsd-5 now defaults
to modular.

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

15186 possible pkgsrc packages in pkgsrc-2014Q3
12335 pkgsrc entries as reported by lintpkgsrc (unique package Makefiles)
14741 binary packages built with clang for NetBSD-current/x86_64
13120 binary packages built with gcc for Joyent's SmartOS/i386
13026 binary packages built with gcc for Joyent's SmartOS/x86_64
13484 binary packages built with gcc for Linux-2.6.32/x86_64
11478 binary packages built with gcc for Darwin 10.8.0/i386
12363 binary packages built with clang for FreeBSD 10.0/x86_64
(also 13016 binary packages built with dash as shell and gcc for Joyent's SmartOS/i386)

In addition, this quarter:
210 packages have been added
3 packages have been renamed
15 packages removed, 12 with a successor
1123 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 44th quarterly release of pkgsrc.

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

Package Additions
=================
gcc-4.9 and tinyxml2 were added to pkgsrc, as well as python, perl and
ruby wrappers for many libraries.  It's also worth noting that the
bash patch from pkgsrc to disable function definitions in the
environment, made by Christos Zoulas, has been adopted by many in
mitigating the shellshock bug.

Package Removals
================
We actively manage the packages in pkgsrc, and delete ones that are
not necessary.  We said goodbye to subversion-1.6 and eric3 for this
branch.

Other Changes
=============
Greg Troxel made the default X11 version for NetBSD-5 to be the
modular X11 as found in pkgsrc.  The march of the haskell pkgsrc
entries continues, thanks to Ryosuke Moro.  We welcome reports for
building pkgtools/cwrapper on exotic platforms.  It will soon become a
central part of the pkgsrc infrastructure.  All feedback to Joerg
Sonnenberger (joerg%pkgsrc.org@localhost) or tech-pkg%pkgsrc.org@localhost, please.

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 bash-4.3 has a arbitrary-code-execution vulnerability, see http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2014-6271
Package bash-4.3 has a arbitrary-code-execution vulnerability, see http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2014-7169
%

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-2014Q3/

and anonymous cvs can be used:
        cvs -z3 -q -d anoncvs%anoncvs.NetBSD.org@localhost:/cvsroot checkout -r 
pkgsrc-2014Q3 -P pkgsrc

or by pulling from the git mirrors at:
        https://github.com/jsonn/pkgsrc
        https://github.com/joyent/pkgsrc
or the mercurial mirror at:
	https://bitbucket.org/agc/pkgsrc.hg

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
Wed Oct  1 01:20:50 UTC 2014