Re: packages, versions and browsers

[steve%prd.co.uk@localhost (Steve Blinkhorn)]

You wrote:
> 
> --=-=-=
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> 
> 
>   Am I mistaken, or have things started to get awfully complicated when
>   it comes to some packages?   I've recently become convinced that there is a
>   memory leak in the version of Firefox I've been running, which has
>   made my personal workstation grind to a near halt.   So I thought -
>   .......
> 
> I understand where you're coming from.  I can offer an obsevation and a
> suggestion:
> 
>   firefox seems to have stability/bloat issues, and it's not clear
>   that's about NetBSD.  There are a huge number of package dependencies.

I agree.

> 
>   The pkgsrc stable branches are much more stable than head.   I would
>   suggest that you install from binary packages built for your os
>   release and the most recent branch, and stick with that.   When
>   updating, it may be best to remove all old packages and then add the
>   new ones.

Which is what I tried to do in the first place.   But there does not seem to be 
a
nicely wrapped-up version of firefox - that's just a script that needs 
xulrunner,
which is in <devel>.   Maybe it's just 5.0.2 that lacks such a thing?   Anyone?
> 
> There are tools that I don't really understand for managing binary
> packages.  Certainly there is pkg_chk, but also pkgin, which is on my
> list of things to understand.  I believe that it's intended to support
> your use case.

pkgin is new to me too - nothing in my online manual.   But in general, except 
in
simple cases with few or no dependencies, the binary package environment does 
not seem
complete enough to be dependable - it may just be detail that's missing here and
there, but those of us who are first and foremost users don't necessarily have 
the
time to do a lot of option twiddling (remembering the twiddles from last time 
round
the loop is hard enough).   And these days, a working browser is not the luxury 
it
once was.

> 
> I personally build from source and use pkg_rolling-replace to manage it,
> but I do that partly because I commit to pkgsrc fairly often.  I don't
> necessarily recomend that to new users.
> 

I suppose I think that I ought to be able to work entirely from binary 
releases, but
be prepared to build from source in case of special needs.   I have the skills, 
but
it's not where I contribute to keeping the world turning.   Thank you, in any 
case,
for a thoughtful and helpful answer.

--
Steve Blinkhorn <steve%prd.co.uk@localhost>