Re: make modular X11 the default on NetBSD

[Julio Merino <jmmv%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Aleksey Cheusov <cheusov%tut.by@localhost> 
wrote:
> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 7:31 PM, Joerg Sonnenberger
> <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost> wrote:
>> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 10:01:03AM -0400, Julio Merino wrote:
>>> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 3:56 AM, David Holland
>>> Another option would be to only rebuild a package if its full version
>>> (including the revision) has changed.  Yes, I'm aware that this has
>>> its own problems, but it also means that the maintainer controls
>>> exactly what causes a package to be rebuilt and ensures that package
>>> revisions are bumped to showcase differences in the binaries.
>
>> It doesn't help for that purpose. In fact, it just increases the chance
>> of getting broken binary packages by a significant factor.
>
> This is actually how most other packaging systems work. The main task
> of the packager,
> besides packaging itself and bug fixing, is to detect changes in ABI/API and 
> to
> update buildlink3.mk accordingly and make a recursive version bump (in
> term of pkgsrc)
> if necessary like pkgsrc developers did for png-1.5.
> Nobody rebuilds *all* packages that depend on libX11 just because
> it was updated. Really!

I didn't want to bring up Linux, but yes, you are right.  I have
recently been packaging for Fedora and packages are rarely rebuilt --
only when there is an incompatible upgrade, or when the package itself
changes, the rebuild is done.  And, as amazing as it may sound, they
just work.  The fact of avoiding packages rebuilds over and over again
for no reason cuts down on resource requirements significantly.  Yes,
it has its cost in being less stable in some small cases, but it would
also result in the ability of building more packages, and keeping slow
architectures up to date.

-- 
Julio Merino / @jmmv