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

From: Daniel Engberg <daniel.engberg.lists_at_pyret.net>
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2024 18:35:15 UTC
On 2024-09-09T19:38:56.000+02:00, void <void@f-m.fm> wrote:

> 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.
> 
> --

I would imagine that for larger installs it's something inbetween
where you build your own "set" of packages and base with custom
settings etc and then push the binaries.

I would also like to remind people that at least for ports far from
all ports have runtime detection of SIMD instructions which can cause
quite a bit of a difference in performance so setting CPUTYPE might
drastically improve performance. Canonical (Ubuntu) are looking into
providing different sets of packages depending on baseline so it's a
thing. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-x86-64-v3-Images-Azure

I also build from source btw =)

Best regards,

Daniel