Re: make modular X11 the default on NetBSD

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost>]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 04:26:47PM -0500, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> On Fri, 18 May 2012, Aleksey Cheusov wrote:
> 
> > not only required and provided shared libraries are collected (like we do 
> > with
> > REQUIRES and PROVIDES) but all *symbols* required and provided by every
> > executable and shlibs in the package. Package manager (modified apt4rpm)
> > in turn makes additional consistency per-symbol checks. More over
> 
> Is this also included in packages that are provided to end users?

Doing such a check would be nice, but requires a database of before
states, which is somewhat expensive to keep, at least in terms of disk
size. Assuming that upstream gets it right is a very bad assumption.
Blindly trusting tools as well. Add the overhead of conditional features
on platforms like *BSD vs Linux vs Solaris and it becomes very, very
messy.

> > Rebuilding all packages recursivelly, especially in quarter branches,
> > costs too much
> > taking into account limitations in the hardware.

I disagree on that. I do current builds on 5 year old hardware for
-current and generally doesn't that long. It feels much more like an
excuse for the existing hardware and the way it is utilized...

> Maybe just building all from start each quarter the first time is good 
> and then for the next three months only rebuild as needed.
> 
> My normal pkgsrc usage for ten years on many systems is also to not 
> recursively reinstall dependents. I work hard to skip that. I have 
> hundreds of packages installed from 2007 and 2008 for example, but I 
> update packages very recently for things I need. 

That's fine for someone who knows exactly what he is doing and how to
fix things when they go wrong. The behavior we have right now makes at
least sure that "delete all pcackages and re-install them from ftp.n.o"
has an almost 100% chance of giving you a consistent build.

Joerg