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NetBSD to Freeze pkgsrc Tree
jschauma writes "Alistair Crooks announced
today that the NetBSD Packages Team
will start a freeze on the pkgsrc tree in order to prepare for the release of
the fourth stable branch, pkgsrc-2004Q4. The freeze will begin on December 6th
2004, and will last for a maximum of 2 weeks, during which the developers will
bring down the PR count and fix problems shown by the bulk builds."
The latest binary packages currently available are built under 1.6.2 and should therefor run just fine under 1.6.x (including 1.6.0). Given that the 2.0 release is coming Really Really Soon Now (tm), it's a pretty safe assumption that after the freeze the binary packages from the new branch will be built under NetBSD 2.0. Of course a 2.0 kernel can run older binaries (if you have the necesary COMPAT options(4) in your kernel). In addition, pkg_add(1) will warn/complain/fail depending on the discrepancy of the version under which the binary package was built compared to the version you are running.
-- "Tradition is the illusion of permanence."
PR = Problem Reports, containing both submissions of new packages for pkgsrc, as well as problems with existing problems. Some of them with fixes included and easy to fix, others with no fixes included and only happening when you run them on some obscure configurations at full moon.
Is the pkgsrc tree the source tree for the entire distribution?
No, NetBSD is a complete operating system on it's own, with a defined set of functionality and programs, all in one source tree[1]. Additional 3rd party software for building a webserver, database server, desktop system etc. can be installed from either pkgsrc or a precompiled (binary) package.
- Hubert
[1] See cvsweb.netbsd.org for a web interface to the complete source of the operating system, running on 50+ hardware platforms in the "src" module.
Not mentioned above is that you can set PKG_PATH to fetch the packages from a 1.6.2 (or whatever) directory on the FTP server(s). This is what you should do possibly in csh.login or whatever you use, but note that you have to unset PKG_PATH before doing pkgsrc work (it will warn you about this).
Any reason not to upgrade to 2.0, though? It's managed not to be bloated which is a huge plus. The only downside is that the new gcc is very slow (that's GNU for you) compared to 2.95, but can generate faster code sometimes. You can build and install a netbsd-2-0 CVS tree on a 1.6 system (build.sh) and install it right over. But remember - kernel (with COMPAT_16) first, reboot, THEN world!
Sam ty sig.
What does the PR count count?
The number of opened bugs remaining in the pkgsrc tree.
Not just bugs. There are also PR's that include patches to update versions of the software in pkgsrc as well as new package submissions.
Is the pkgsrc tree the source tree for the entire distribution?
Nope. The pkgsrc is the source tree for the software that can be installed on a NetBSD system.
There's been an intermittent project to turn the base system into packages, but I don't have any references handy. For now, you can install Xorg from pkgsrc rather than XFree86 at install time, and this is what I've been doing lately.
Two-space tabs or three
It's up to you. Edit your ~/.vimrc file to change this. You are using vim, right? ;-)
Four spaces like the Lord intended.
FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has a secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."
NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)
OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
*BSD in general:
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.