Slashdot Mirror
The BSDs Need A Unified Package Collection
qbasicprogrammer writes "Chris Coleman wrote to Daily Daemon News suggesting a unified package collection. Currently OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD maintain separate ports/package trees. Chris points out the various BSD package collections all carry different versions Mozilla; a common ports system would certainly benefit everyone."
I basically agree with the comments at Daemonnews. It is a really good idea. But there are a number of technical reasons: all three BSD's use a relatively different make system, they all have different goals in ports (Freebsd would want them quicker, NetBSD would want them more portable, etc) and a number of programs will have to have a lot of work done to run on some of the BSD's (Mozilla doesnt run on OBSD yet, applications that are linux-emulation dependant like MpegTV will run on FreeBSD but your chances are much less on the others).
The main problem is communication between developers. I doubt ANY of the BSD will make the effort to start this. The only way to do it is to have a group of people who are familiar with the ports systems of the respective bsd systems, BUT that doesnt hold any strong arogance towards a specific BSD. The project must be done independantly and not tied to a specific BSD. This would make a common ground for the BSD's to go to. Maybe even related to Freshports.org? I've only been there once... it seemed very useless to me since i do not run FreeBSD, but if they were to start working on an independant ports system, it would be nice.
And finally... Speaking of Mozilla in OpenBSD: I'm trying to help out with this as much as possible. Bug #49036, I think, is for the bug that causes the segmentation fault on startup for OBSD users. I submitted it, but i'm pretty much a newbie, so any comments on that would be great. Also bug #44301 is an attempt to get OpenBSD and NetBSD listed in the Operating Systems area of Bug Reports (have to use Other right now). Vote For This! Please people, the only way we will see a stable, working Mozilla for the BSD's is to help out with the project. It only takes 5-10 minutes on a dialup to update the source (after initially getting the repository) on a dialup. Building does take a while, but Come On! If anyone wants to discuss this or needs help starting, i'm usually on irc.mozilla.org as "semaphore" or you can email me.
I'm all for the unified ports collection. I think that it could be done using the macros etc. described in the comments at daemonnews or something similar.
The catch is, as posted at DN, is that I don't think that any one of the BSDs are going to start it themselves. (BSDi might try, if for nothing else but the publicity.) I agree with one of the previous posters, it will probably need to be an "independent" group working on a "limited" number of ports. If that group can prove that what it comes up with works, then it would be easier to convince the ports maintainers to adopt the system and WHAMO! we have a unified ports collection.
Regarding concerns about the different focus of each BSD, a system can be developed the will allow an admin to configure the ports to do what s/he wants.
It was suggested elsewhere that a NOT_AUDITED flag could be used for those packages that are not audited for security. However, even OpenBSD doesn't audit their ports collection.
From the OpenBSD website: "The ports & packages collection does NOT go through the thorough security audit that OpenBSD follows. Although we strive to keep the quality of the packages collection high, we just do not have enough human resources to ensure the same level of robustness and security."
The NetBSD crew can have a flag like PORT_UNTESTED to say that the package has not been tested to run on every platform.
Something can be done with each of focus that will allow an admin to say "I only want security audited programs that can run on everything NetBSD can."
Developers/maintainers can add a flag to the packages like BUILT4_FreeBSD or BUILT4_RHLINUXEMU so admins can configure their setup to not build anything that doesn't build for their platform (of flavor of Linux Emulator.)
If you want to get something like this started, let me know. We can try to organize something and invite some of the ports maintainers from all of the BSDs. Let's not let a good idea disapear because no one did anything.
PerlStalker
there is a package system for FreeBSd. As for upgrading ports, usually it is simply a matter of cvsup'ping your ports collection and then remaking and installing it. The ports collection does much more than packages do. Can a package install dependencies? Can a package download everything you need for you?
this space for rent
On openbsd, a pkg_add will add dependancies if they are in the working directory or in /usr/ports/packages.
I think the previous poster was refering to what will happen if you try to do a pkg_add foo-2.0.tgz when you already have foo-1.0.tgz installed. Another problem occurs (if i'm not mistaken) with Flavors on OpenBSD (like php3, php3-mysql, php3-mysql-ssl).
As follows...
Chris Coleman chrisc@vmunix.com says:I" have registered bsdports.org. Now I will be taking applications to work on the project.
If you have CVS access to an existing BSD ports/pkg_src tree, it will be summarily granted.
If you wish to donate resources to the project, please contact me. I see this as a community effort."