[ANNOUNCE] pkgsrc-2011Q1

[Thomas Klausner <wiz%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

The pkgsrc-2011Q1 Branch
========================

The pkgsrc developers are happy to announce the new pkgsrc-2011Q1
branch, which has support for even more packages than previous
branches. Some major packages have also been updated in this release.

At the same time, the pkgsrc-2010Q4 branch has been deprecated, and
continuing engineering starts on the pkgsrc-2011Q1 branch.

Some highlights of the new pkgsrc-2011Q1 branch are:

+ MirBSD support was added to pkgsrc; see
  http://www.mirbsd.org/pkgsrc.htm for details
+ We're aiming to make this the last branch to support non-DESTDIR packages.
  We have almost finished the transition to DESTDIR installation, where
  a staging directory is used to make a binary package, which is then
  managed by the pkg_install tools.
+ GNOME has been mostly updated to version 2.32.0, KDE4 to 4.5.5.
+ The conversion from the last teTeX distribution to texlive
  (currently 2010) is still in progress.
+ png was updated to the newest stable 1.5 branch.
+ Some packages still using GTK 1 were removed; we're in the process
  of fading out support for it.
+ Modern ada packages were added, like gnat-aux
+ Other notable changes include
        + We bid a fond thanks, and farewell, to some old favourites,
          mostly gtk1 users.
        + The addition of some interesting, pertinent, and shiny
          packages such as window (:-) - brought over from NetBSD's
          src archive), many tex packages, most gmpc plugins.
        + Notable updates to packages such as roundcube, tmux,
          shotwell, jpeg, png, gbrainy, ikiwiki, scmgit, opera, xchm,
          nmap, sqlite3, finch/pidgin, dovecot2, mercurial, unrar,
          clamav, ntop, xz, many many ruby packages, lots of Linux
          emulation support packages, quvi, kid3, jabberd2, gnucash,
          pkgin, exiv2, vlc, mkvtoolnix, kdbg, monotone, libzip,
          boost, wesnoth, gnumeric, unison, postfix, mldonkey, gcc44,
          wordpress, ncurses, samba, firefox, seamonkey, thunderbird,
          curl, bluefish, vala, bash, p7zip, php53, exim, sudo, atf,
          and filezilla.

+ The "Package of the Quarter" award is hereby awarded to dovecot2,
nominated by Matthias Scheler.

The list of platforms supported by pkgsrc is AIX, BSD/OS, Darwin (Mac
OS X), DragonFly BSD, FreeBSD, Haiku, HP/UX, IRIX, Interix, Linux,
MirBSD, NetBSD, OpenIndiana, OSF1, OpenBSD, QNX, and SunOS (Solaris). We
are aware that support for some platforms is at a more mature stage
than others, and would like to encourage feedback from users and
developers on our more esoteric platforms.

+ Continuing engineering on the "stable" branches of pkgsrc continues
to work well, and our release engineering team has done a marvelous
job in pulling up changes to the stable branch.  Our thanks go to
Matthias Scheler, Steven Drake, S.P.Zeidler, and Eric Schnoebelen
for all the hard work they do in sanity checking pullup requests, and
managing the stable branches in pkgsrc.

+ Constant bulk building on a number of platforms has improved our
ability to identify potential areas of concern, and to correct them
sooner.  It has also improved our ability to make binary packages
available, and we are working on ways to improve this further.  For
more information, please refer to the pkgsrc-bulk mailing list,
archives available at

        http://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-bulk/

+ The number of packages has grown to 10973; the number of
supported platforms is currently 17.  NetBSD, on all its supported
architectures, is considered to be one pkgsrc platform.

As always, we'd like to encourage users of the packages collection to
audit for security problems at least every day using "pkg_admin audit"
- this will provide notification of any packages which are vulnerable
to exploit.  pkg_admin is part of the pkg_install tools.

The pkgsrc-security team do a marvelous job in tracking notifications
of vulnerabilities in packages, and disseminating this information,
and our sincere thanks go to them for this essential work.

We'd also really appreciate it if people would install the
pkgsrc/pkgtools/pkgsurvey package, and then run the pkgsurvey script
for us. This will forward us a list of the packages installed on that
machine, and the operating system and release level of the operating
system. The results will be kept confidential, but the output will
help us analyse the packages that are most used.

The source tar files for the new branch can be found at:

        http://downloads.pkgsrc.org/
                or
        http://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/pkgsrc-2011Q1/pkgsrc.tar.gz
                or
        http://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/pkgsrc-2011Q1/pkgsrc.tar.bz2

You can also use the "pkgsrc-2011Q1" tag to check it out yourself from
anoncvs.NetBSD.org or any of the mirrors.

Thomas Klausner
On behalf of the pkgsrc developers