Re: Binary updates (was Re: It's not Rust, it's FreeBSD (and LLVM))

On Mon, 9 Sep 2024, at 15:32, Cy Schubert wrote:
> Those of us who build from source and build ports, whether manually or 
> through our own poudriere, are the minority. Just visit the FreeBSD forums. 

IIRC, the forums don't entertain issues raised by src builders, 
only -releng. This is from a while ago though, I might be wrong about that now,
am happy to be corrected.

> I attend OpenHack here. People who do use FreeBSD use freebsd-update and 
> binary packages. (I use freebsd-update and binary packages on some VMs at 
> $JOB, while maintaining my own network at home as any developer does.)

I use freebsd-update on some VMs too. It has its place. But always poudriere
for ports, as most of the VMs are internet facing, and when a vuln happens
and is patched it's the fastest way to fix the situation, rather than waiting
on the pkg builders.

> And that's a marketing feature of FreeBSD. Most users don't want he hassle 
> of building and installing an O/S.

Have most users been asked?

> Out in the real world people use binary updates and binary packages. We 
> developers are an anomaly these days.

I'd not consider myself a dev. That might be just me though. Is streamlining a
kernel to have what you want and no more a 'dev' activity? Manually patching?

> Just because a few of us build from source doesn't mean the rest of the 
> world does.

How would you know? Who has counted the numbers? I think maybe a poll on the
main site might be enlightening. I mean, I agree src builders are probably in 
a minority now, as freebsd-update is convenient in standard cases,
but it's possibly a larger number than you think, who build from src.

We'll never really know without counting.

I really hope that when pkgsrc becomes dominant, that we're still able to 
grab src in git and checkout whats required, and build from that.
It's so very versatile.
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