freebsd 5.3-release and some observations

[Kris Kennaway]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2004 at 03:21:02PM +1000, jason andrade wrote:

> given the length of time for package tree updates i'd be
> asking if there is any thoughts that could be raised about
> how better to supply package trees so they aren't `tied'
> to an architecture and thus appear to be released in 3-5G
> chunks.

package trees are absolutely tied to an architecture, because they
contain compiled files that will only run on that architecture (modulo
things like amd64-i386 compatibility).

> i'm a little confused about the -current package trees in ports/$ARCH.

alpha packages are not built regularly any more (I announced this some
time ago).  For other architectures we build packages for supported
release branches (4.x, 5.x and 6.x).  Since FreeBSD 4.x only supports
i386 and alpha (but see above), that's why the others don't have 4.x
packages.  The missing 6.x packages are because the first such builds
are not yet finished.  They'll appear in the next week or so.

> how often are the -current package 
> sets being updated ? once upon a time it was a weekly (?) rebuild.

All supported package branches for i386 are rebuilt roughly every
week, depending on how the builds go.  Other architectures are updated
a bit less frequently because the builds take longer.  Note that 4.x
and 5.x builds are usually incremental builds thesedays, meaning that
if the package doesn't change it isn't changed on the server, thus
reducing mirror download bulk.

> should mirrors carry this ?

If at all possible, yes.  Mirrors are most useful when they're
complete mirrors.

Kris
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