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NetBSD Packages Collection Gets 'pkgviews'

Posted by michael on from the apt-get-still-better dept.

jschauma writes "NetBSD's Packages Collection aka pkgsrc now has support for an experimental new framework called ``pkgviews''. This framework, finally allowing multiple versions of one package to co-exist without conflicts (among other great features), was first proposed by Alistair Crooks at EuroBSDCon 2002 and has been integrated into pkgsrc by Johnny C. Lam, who just posted a User's guide to the tech-pkg MailingList."

4 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Good start... by StressedEd · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is something that is always welcome. Its quite often the case that one would like the original version of s/w and new version coexisting during (say) a transitional period.

    This can be a pain to manage, hopefully the migration of this kind of tool will ease the pain of this.

    --
    Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
  2. Depot begat Stow, who begat Pkgview? by sparcv9 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This looks very similar to GNU Stow, which a derivative of CMU Depot. By the way, we (a University right down the street from CMU) also used an internal derivative of Depot, called Parcel, but we've mostly phased that out now.

    --

    This is not a Fugazi .sig
    1. Re:Depot begat Stow, who begat Pkgview? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      May as well note that DragonFly is going to attempt something similar, but with an alternate grade of 'hack quality' -- the intention in DragonFly is to allow filesystem overlays (union mounts on crack?) such that packages can be totally "convinced" that they're the only version of themselves installed.

      It's hard to say (meaning, I haven't done my research) if DBSD's revisiting of the issue inspired the cleanup and release of pkgviews, or if that was proceeding quietly before Dillon-and-friends even thought to begin their stab.

      Either way, this looks like a good year for package management on *BSD. Sorry, RPM users. ;)

  3. Sweet by b00m3rang · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The only gripe I've had with FreeBSD installs is that some packages depend on different versions of Apache, for example. While either would work, the scripts don't know that, and there's no way to get the two versions to coexist. Hopefully they'll adopt this functionality too.