Re: pkgsrcCon: what to steal from *BSD ports

[Jens Rehsack <rehsack%googlemail.com@localhost>]

On 06/10/10 11:06, Thomas Klausner wrote:
> Hi!
>
> About ten days ago, pkgsrcCon was held in Basel. I'd like to thank the
> organizers, in particular Vera, for a well organized conference!
>
> One of the most interesting parts of the conference for me was the
> comparison with FreeBSD ports and the OpenBSD packaging system.
>
> Some features I found worth imitating:
> . OpenBSD "pkg_add -u"
>    Upgrades all installed packages based on binary packages; leaves
>    libraries lying around in separate packages if they are still
>    needed; automatically wanders tree in proper order; removes
>    library-packages when they are not needed any longer.
>    (OpenBSD, however, doesn't have up-to-date packages currently for the
>    last release, only for -current.)
>
>    NetBSD: pkgin is probably on the way to get there.

While I (personally, not in role of pkgsrc committer) do not care
about binary package updates, thanks to Joerg's DESTDIR support we're
on the best way to get proper support there.

I don't want to argue against pkg_chk, pkg_in, pkg_rr etc. - but this
are three tools for doing similar things in a different way (IIRC
'pkg_add -u' works fine on NetBSD, too, doesn't it?).
I miss one tool like portupgrade on FreeBSD - of course, improved.

> . FreeBSD's pointyhat
>    A web interface to a cluster of bulk build servers that build all
>    packages on all supported FreeBSD platforms, see
>    pointyhat.freebsd.org
>
>    NetBSD: pbulk would probably be a good base, but there's much more
>    to do until we get to a similar system, including getting
>    hardware.

I don't know how this can be managed, but having such a build cluster
would be great. When I'm in a situation where I can support that with
hardware or money, I would do (e.g. buying a Sun Fire at eBay for TNF).
Note: this is not an offer to do it now, but if TNF (and maybe children
organisations) operates such a cluster and there will be a list what
is needed, I would consult that list in case I can provide something.

> . FreeBSD's tinderbox
>    Every ports commit triggers an automatic rebuild of the directly
>    affected ports (i.e. those which the commit touched, not the ports
>    depending on them) and checks if it packages. If not, the committer
>    and the mailing list get an automatic mail with the error that was
>    found.
>
>    NetBSD: We currently don't really have anything like that.

Maybe the above cluster could handle this, too. I rate it as a waste
of energy/effort having two clusters for nearly the same thing. Daily
bulk builds would satisfy me (maybe we could add an interface for
developers to require a priority build when working on a difficult
port/update). I think, mail the build errors once (first occurrence)
would satisfy most.

> Anyone interested in getting pkgsrc something like the above?

Yes :)

Jens