[CFT] packaging the base system with pkg(8)

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

On Tue, 19 Apr 2016, Warner Losh wrote:

> Sadly the tenor and tone of the discussion isn?t one where progress is 
> made. The tone has been a bit toxic and demanding, which grinds people 
> into dust, rather than motivating them to fix things. You might call it 
> a discussion, but it reads to me more as a bunch of angry villagers 
> storming the castle. No good can come from that. Tone down the outrage 
> by a factor of 100 and try to have the conversation again.

I agree. Really, I do!  But this must work both ways, and I can say 
unequivocally that my earlier interactions with the 'pkg' people have been 
unpleasant.  Some time ago I asked about how pkg interacts with 
LOCALBASE!=/usr/local.  This because I like to build ports from 
/usr/ports, but install them under /usr/pkg so as to keep /usr/local free 
for truly local code.

This works fine (after a source rebuild of pkg), but for tools like 
portupgrade (from ports), which use pkg under the hood to handle 
dependency checks.  pkg against the ports tree vs. pkg against my 
LOCALBASE=/usr/pkg were conflicting.  So I asked some questions about how 
to resolve this.  The response was bizarre.  Wanting to use pkg with a 
different directory seemed almost offensive to the peoploe who answered. 
There was no thought of even considering the use case.  I ended up filing 
a bugzilla report, but I see that got close with 'works as intended' a 
couple of days ago.

I can't see how pkg as a base package manager would allow me 
to continue with my ports->/usr/pkg mapping.

I really think the biggest problem people have at the moment is the 
complete and utter lack of respect core and the pkg crew have for the end 
users of the system.  I'm pretty sure we all get WHY this work is being 
done.  We don't all AGREE with why it's being done.  And that is the 
conversation we are trying to have.  But every time we try to have it, we 
get slammed down as a bunch of ungrateful whining non-coders.

Lots of people wrote a lot of lines of code for Linux.  Is the argument 
that we should just adopt that?  Because it's written, it must be good?

You guys need to get over that and come back to the table to have a 
rational discussion with the vast majority of people who actually USE this 
OS.  All glory to Juniper and Citrix and everyone else who packages the OS 
into their various 'appliances'.  I use both of the above at work, and 
believe me, for the amount of money they take out of my pocket, they can 
hire their own release engineers to deal with this internally without 
inflicting this on everyone else.

And I really think THAT is the crux of the argument everyone is trying to 
make.

To reiterate: packages are good.  In moderation.  As with all other 
things.  But they have to solve the general case, and pkg - both the tool 
and the methodology in its current and pending incarnations - does not.

I, and others, are trying to have a real conversation about this.  But the 
blowback is incredible.  Let alone incredulous.

--lyndon