FreeBSD is really great.. BUT..

[Daniel Corbe]

Daniel Corbe <corbe at corbe.net> writes:

> Arthur Chance <freebsd at qeng-ho.org> writes:
>
>> On 19/03/2014 15:10, Matthew Seaman wrote:
>>> On 03/19/14 10:34, Martin Braun wrote:
>>>> The binary packages on FreeBSD are compiled with so few options available
>>>> that you end up compiling the whole bunch from source anyway!
>>>>
>>>> A simple setup on a mailserver with Postfix, Dovecot, MySQL, and a couple
>>>> of other packages doesn't work using the binary packages because they are
>>>> NOT compiled to fit together!
>>>>
>>>> Now.. what the "¤"%"#!"!¤ is the point then!? Why don't we just forget
>>>> about binary packages in FreeBSD and make everyone compile?
>>>
>>> Because we're in a state of transition at the moment.  We have not yet
>>> completely obsoleted the old pkg_tools (soon though...), so there are
>>> changes to the ports tree we cannot make just yet.  pkg(8) itself is
>>> right now in the process of growing a much more sophisticated solver,
>>> which will mean much more intelligence about constructing dependency
>>> trees based on the capabilities and requirements of the available
>>> packages, rather than the RUN_DEPENDS settings pulled from the ports tree.
>>>
>>> Yes, it's frustrating at the moment since we're in a half-way house
>>> between the old-style ports and the regime where binary packages
>>> basically 'just work' for the vast majority of users.  (It's likely that
>>> there will always be people who want odd combinations of options who
>>> will be best advised to compile their own, but ideally they should be
>>> few and far between.)
>>>
>>> The best user experience at the moment seems to be for people building
>>> packages using poudriere (or similar) and running their own repo to
>>> distribute them.  But that's just at the moment, and could well change
>>> pretty soon.
>>
>> That's good to hear and keep up the good work, but I suspect there are
>> some awkward customers (like me) who will always have to roll their
>> own. On world facing servers in particular I cut out large chunks of
>> the base system that aren't used, on the grounds that if it's present
>> it probably won't have security vulnerabilities, but if it's absent it
>> definitely can't have them. (Similarly, removing the tool chain on a
>> server prevents one well known attack escalation.) Some ports rely by
>> default on base system features I remove, so I'll always have to build
>> custom versions of those. However, if the pkgng work can satisfy 99%
>> of the FreeBSD audience the team will get major applause from me.
>>
>
> The current status quo is acceptable.  Pre-built binary packages solve
> 80% of my problems and I have to build the other 20% from ports.  But
> that's still 80% less work for me to do.

Sorry for double posting, but it also helps to have purpose-built
servers.  Trying to shove everything you want to do on one or a handful
of boxes is just a lot of work anyways and pkg won't fix that problem.