Announcing pkgsrc-2012Q4

[Alistair Crooks <agc%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

pkgsrc-2012Q4
=============
The pkgsrc team is proud to announce that pkgsrc-2012Q4 is available. 
This release marks the 15th birthday of pkgsrc (the first entries were
added in October 1997), and this release includes many new packages
and updates.

pkgsrc is a framework allowing third-party software to be built,
installed, and managed in a consistent, logical and easy manner.  The
resulting binary packages can be manipulated using binary package
managers like pkgin and nih.  The framework is portable across
operating systems, making it easy to support diverse systems from
Windows to BSD, and including Linux and Mac OS X - see below for a
complete list of platforms.

pkgsrc releases take place at the end of every quarter.  The
pkgsrc-2012Q4 release is the 49th release of pkgsrc.

Numbers of Packages
===================
The latest figures we have for different platforms, include:

11942 total packages for NetBSD-current/amd64
11229 binary packages built with gcc for NetBSD-current/amd64
11336 binary packages built with clang for NetBSD-current/amd64
10265 binary packages for Linux-3.2.7/x86_64
9519 binary packages for SunOS-5.11/x86_64
11105 binary packages for Dragonfly-3.3/i386
10985 pkgsrc entries

178 packages have been added this quarter
30 packages have been removed this quarter
1259 packages have been updated this quarter
2 packages have been renamed this quarter

It is interesting to note that, according to pkgsrc-bulk figures on
NetBSD-current/amd64 bulk builds, more packages now build with clang
than with gcc - thanks to Joerg Sonnenberger.

These numbers may not compare exactly to other (binary) packaging
systems; some packaging systems split large packages like boost up
into multiple packages, while others keep unused and unbuildable
packages.  A large amount of work has been done this quarter to
building packages on different platforms with newer compilers.  The
total number of packages has actually gone down since the summer,
mainly due to the removal of support for two older versions of python.

New packages include contao30, deforaos, ffmpeg-1.0.1, freeswitch
sounds, json-c, KeePass, moneyguru, motif-2.3.4, otptool, podcastdl,
polysh, postgres92, python-3.3, sun-jdk7, sun-jre7, swig2

Notable updates include asterisk, automake, bacula, bind, boost,
cairo, cdrtools, cflow, coccinelle, cscope, curl, django, dovecot,
drupal7, fetchmail, firefox, gcc47, git (as scmgit), glusterfs,
gnome3, gnuplot, gnustep, gv, heimdal, hydrogen, ikiwiki, jenkins,
kde, knot, libevent, libreoffice, mercurial, modular-xorg-server,
mono, ng, openjpeg, openldap, openmpi, opensc, pidgin, pkgin, png,
postfix, postgres91, postgresql92, qrencode, R, roundcube, samba,
seamonkey, sqlite3, thunderbird, Transmission, typo3, valgrind, viewvc
webmin, wireshark, xlockmore, xterm, xulrunner

Pkgsrc-security
===============
One neat feature of pkgsrc is its ability to sort package versions
based on the version numbers.  It's used in audit-packages, to report
on any installed packages which may have security vulnerabilities in
them.  pkgsrc-security%pkgsrc.org@localhost maintains lists of vulnerable
packages, along with reference URLs relating to the exposure.  We
thank OBATA Akio, Daniel Horecki, Guillaume Lasmayous, and Tim
Zingelman for their hard work.  Sample output from audit-packages is
shown below:

% audit-packages
Package libtasn1-2.11 has a local-system-compromise vulnerability, see 
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2012-1569
Package gnutls-2.12.14nb1 has a local-system-compromise vulnerability, see 
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2012-1573
%

Getting pkgsrc
==============
While more information can be found in
        http://www.netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/getting.html

tar files for pkgsrc, along with checksums, can be found at
        http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/pkgsrc-2012Q4/

and anonymous cvs can be used:
        cvs -z3 -q -d anoncvs%anoncvs.NetBSD.org@localhost:/cvsroot checkout -r 
pkgsrc-2012Q4 -P pkgsrc


Package of the Quarter
======================
Thomas Klausner nominated pkgsrc/print/lilypond, a music typesetter,
Jared Mcneill nominated samba (used with pam-mkhomedir to integrate
with Active Directory), and Jeff Rizzo nominated pkgin, rsync and zsh
as being ubiquitous on machines he used.

About pkgsrc
============
The strengths of building packages from source are that:

+ not only is the provenance of source code checked (by using multiple
checksums), with pkgsrc, the version of source code you are working
with is the same that other developers and users have.

+ patches are maintained in a central repository, and, again, are
checked at patch application time by using digests. The patches
which are applied to the sources being built are the same ones which
are known to be used and proved by other pkgsrc users (not necessarily
on the same platform)

+ by building from source, all doubts about compilers, build practices,
source code cleanliness, and packaging differences are removed. 
Digital signatures of binary packages, while useful in themselves,
only prove certain aspects of binary package provenance.  (pkgsrc has
had signed packages since 2001.)

+ it may be difficult or impossible to find a pre-built package for
the operating system or architecture

+ a pre-built package may have further or conflicting pre-requisites,
which are themselves difficult to find or build. By building everything,
including pre-requisites, a from-source packaging system can ensure
that pre-requisites are present and integrated

+ local or site options which span packages can be set in a standard way

+ pkgsrc includes a framework for linking only with pre-requisite
packages which are explicitly named; no "build system package"
leakage can take place

At the present time, pkgsrc supports 19 platforms:

        AIX
        BSDOS
        Darwin/Mac OS X
        DragonFly
        FreeBSD
        FreeMiNT
        HPUX
        Haiku
        IRIX
        Interix/SFU/SUA
        Linux
        Minix3
        MirBSD
        NetBSD
        OSF1
        OpenBSD
        QNX
        SunOS/Solaris/SmartOS
        UnixWare

Complete dependency and pre-requisite package information is held and
used by the package management software - if packages rely on other
packages to function properly, that pre-requisite will be built,
installed and managed as part of the package installation process. 
Binary packages can be managed using pkgin.

Alistair Crooks
On behalf of the pkgsrc developers
Thu Jan  3 09:51:17 UTC 2013