[HEADSUP] pkg(8) is now the only package management tool

[Paul Mather]

On Sep 3, 2014, at 10:05 AM, Michelle Sullivan <michelle at sorbs.net> wrote:

> Paul Mather wrote:
>> As I pointed out, until fairly recently there was no such thing as a
>> "stable" release of the ports tree (it's traditionally been a rolling 
>> release model, like -CURRENT).  My question was to those who have been 
>> using the "stable" branches: does it make managing ports updates 
>> easier, or does it just concentrate all the problems into the 
>> transition period between one quarterly branch to another?  I've been 
>> contemplating switching to the quarterly branches for production 
>> machines, so would appreciate feedback.
>> 
> 
> From what I hear getting things into the quarterly branches is neither
> automatic nor pain free so many don't do it.

I agree; it requires some familiarity with the use of Subversion.

> 
>> Portsnap doesn't have any concept of tracking branches, so far as I 
>> know.  It would be nice to have that feature now that there are the 
>> "stable" ports branches.
>> 
>> I guess if you want to track "release" via portsnap the answer is not 
>> to run portsnap. :-)
>> 
>> (A "release" ports tree never changes, so why would you need portsnap 
>> to track its changes, unless you're talking about updating ports from 
>> one -RELEASE to another, like freebsd-update does for the rest of the 
>> OS?)
>> 
> 
> Not quite - portsnap pulls security patches - it just doesn't upgrade...
> Also freebsd-update won't switch you to a 'stable' from 'release'
> etc...   I think portsnap should provide 'stable' - tested, known
> working, security patched... and if you want bleeding edge use
> subversion, because you're likely to know (and accept) the consequences
> of such an action.... not to mention at that point you can rollback or
> if you are a new user that doesn't really know but followed some
> 'helpful' website/blog you can just 'rm -r /usr/ports && portsnap fetch
> extract' to get back to stability.

Again, I agree.  Now that there are "stable" ports branches, it would 
be nice if there was a focus to make tracking them easier, and, 
arguably, as you say, the default.  Maybe this is already being planned 
or even happening.  I've never seen so much development in ports as 
there has been in the last year or so.  My thanks go to those who are 
putting in a lot of time and effort.


>> The designated tool for tracking branches is now Subversion.  I believe 
>> that's why they added svnlite in 10.x.
>> 
> I don't have any 10.x machines yet (and might never have.)

I only have one FreeBSD 8 machine left in production.  I updated it to 
pkgng several months ago and it works well with pkg.  I use poudriere 
to build binary packages for most of my systems, but that one still 
kept up to date via portmaster.  I updated it to pkgng when I'd had 
enough of the EOL warnings during ports builds.  I probably wouldn't 
have seen those (or been as bothered by them) had I been building ports 
via poudriere for it, as I'm not as aware of the build logs with 
poudriere. :-)

Cheers,

Paul.