Jeremy C. Reed a écrit :
> On Mon, 4 Oct 2004, Anand Buddhdev wrote:
> 
> 
>>However, I cannot find any such similar mechanism for the base system.
>>If I log into a NetBSD system, how do I tell what patches or updates it
>>needs? Is there any tool on the system which I can run to tell me of
>>unpatched software in the base system? I have read the NetBSD guide on
> 
> 
> No tool at this time. But that does sound useful.
> 
> Also see http://www.netbsd.org/Security/patches-1.6.2.html
> 
> In many cases, you can just do a "make install" directly in the
> specific directory for the source being updated.
> 
> There are plans to implement a packaging system for the base system and
> there has been work on it. I don't know what its status is.
> 
> Anyways, welcome to NetBSD and thank you for your useful criticism and
> also your good ideas.
> 
> Hopefully, someone else can help with your other issues and also explain
> your "invalid partition table" problem.
> 
> Take care,
> 
>  Jeremy C. Reed
> 
>  	  	 	 BSD News, BSD tutorials, BSD links
> 	  	 	 http://www.bsdnewsletter.com/
>

Are you sure there are plans to do that ?

To me this seems to be a major difference between Linux and BSD 
philosophy. BSD is a whole base system. Linux is a kernel, and you have 
to add third party package to build a system...

Of course It sound usefull not to rebuild everything in the base 
package, but to me this seems more reasonable (for secure and tune 
usability)... And this is the reason why I choosed BSD over Linux.

Didn't you ever fall upon some incompatibility on a Linux system, when 
you have to use some version of glib for a soft, and another for another 
soft ? How will you do that ? package ? NO the system soft you use 
everytime depend on the old one, don't update ! I you install by hand 
and use stuff like LD_LIBRARY_PATH, on wich will depend your system 
command like ls, tar, or anything that use it?
This happen to me so many times (with any distribution), since I need 
for development some special version of some software...

I personally choose BSD, becaus I know that if ANY package fail, I can 
still use the whole system, and not with a single user, no automation, 
and no servers...
It's a hard work to keep dependencies working everytime for every needed 
system configurations in an OS. A whole rebuild is AMHA more secure, 
than building only a part and risk a fail.

We know that even in pkgsrc a make update can fail and leave your system 
without the needed package (and some depenencies)...
If this is a third party software, thats OK, but it is in the base 
system ? what can you do ??If your are not an experienced root, you'll 
have to make a total reinstall, with all the good versions to make it 
work...

I dont want to begin an endless discussion, but just look at this :

http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux1.php
http://www.servangle.net/bsd.php

Those links are a good explanation of differences between Linux and BSD 
to me.

--------

FOR THE TOOL : use cvs -rreleasse-2-0 ( or 1-6) ;-) and build if you 
think you need to patch the system. I dont know other tool at the moment.
FOR THE BUILD PROBLEM, Let me say that there is a -u option in build.sh 
now... if you do that more than once... ( at least in 2-0)

I have written a little script to automate it (cvs and build, and some 
hint on pkgsrc...) from the one for OpenBSD (by James Z) I saw somewhere...
I could post it if someone is interested, but I hope sushi will done 
this a little better when 2-0 will be released especially to download 
latest src patchs ;)

But beware there have been some very usefull enhancements from 1.6 
release that I talk about here (sushi, build process, and so on...).


Anyway ideas are always mandatory to make a wonderfull OS ;)
Regards,

--
Asmo