Thank you (for making the ports less boring).

[Łukasz Wąsikowski]

W dniu 2011-09-14 18:15, Christopher J. Ruwe pisze:

> Matthias Andree <matthias.andree at gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
>> I think you mentioned Arch Linux, further suggestions would be
>> Gentoo Linux (you might like emerge), and further options are
>> Debian GNU/kFreeBSD and using a FreeBSD base system with pkgsrc
>> (rather than ports) on top.
> 
> Came as Gentoo user, abandoned Gentoo because of to many quirks
> with updating packages (ebuilds). From my perspective, the
> situation is better here (FreeBSD).

Really? I've been using FreeBSD for over 10 years now, Gentoo for half
of that time and I can surely say that Gentoo's portage is much better
than FreeBSD's ports.

1. If there's a need for sysadmin to perform some tasks after updating
a port:

FreeBSD - look up UPDATING and search for any of the ports you're
about to update.
Gentoo - update whatever you need, at the end of the process you'll
get all the information you need right on the screen.

2. Libraries bumps:
FreeBSD: pkg_libchk likes to show false positives.
Gentoo: revdep-rebuild works like a charm.

3. Someone deleted port I like to use / I want my personal ports tree:
FreeBSD: I wish :/
Gentoo: overlays works well.

4. Port's options:
FreeBSD: per port options in /var/db/ports or global in
/etc/make.conf. It's hard to tell during update what options are set
for the port. Also if I won't look in the Makefile of a specific port
I won't be able to tell if WITH_SOMETHING will work with it.
Gentoo: USE flags (global and per port) are nice to use and you see
all the options set in one place during the update.

5. Port's versioning:
FreeBSD: most ports available in one version, hard to downgrade if new
version is not what I wanted for whatever reason.
Gentoo: most ports available in at least few versions, update /
downgrade is not a problem.

-- 
best regards
Lukasz Wasikowski