Re: NetBSD vs FreeBSD

[Daniel Carrera <dcarrera%gmail.com@localhost>]

On 08/04/2011 06:29 AM, Alistair Crooks wrote:
> Alex Goncharov<alex-goncharov%comcast.net@localhost>  writes:
> > I.e. if you use a "source" install, not installing pre-built packages.
> >
> > Do you remember any specifics about the ports pains you had, absent from pkgsrc?
>
> my main gripe, as a user, was the absence of audit-packages, and the
> need to specify either the precise version number of a package, or
> remember to wildcard things, when using the pkg_install tools, with
> possibly interesting effects if dealing with something like libtool-\*
> and libtool-base-\*

Yesterday I started experimenting with OpenBSD again and I noticed that. 
It has been quite irritating. I don't like using wildcards, so half the 
time I end up typing the "pkg_add" command twice: Once to find out the 
exact package name and another to actually install.

Another annoyance, as a noob, is that OpenBSD by default partitions your 
disk into umpteen partitions and /usr/local turned out to be too small 
for all the things I wanted to install (I basically want a full desktop 
system) so now I have to re-install and learn the partition tool. With 
NetBSD and FreeBSD I didn't have to learn the partition tool, I could 
just say "use the whole disk and don't bother me with the details".


> pkgsrc is quite a different beast these days.  my 2002 talk at
> eurobsdcon outlined some of the differences between ports and pkgsrc,
> and there were 50+ slides in that section - since then, pkgsrc has
> diverged even more.

Do you have that talk somewhere?


> the main differences i'd point out nowadays are the ...ummm
> portability of pkgsrc, the dewey comparison of version numbers making
> it possible to do audit-packages and the like, and pkgsrc's buildlink
> infrastructure, which has two advantages:

Can you explain the audit part? I don't know what you mean.


> 1.  it allows pkgsrc packages to be built with exactly the versions of
> software that are wanted, and not what happens to be already installed
> in /usr/local - to illustrate, imagine that ncurses is installed, and
> another package's configure script checks for the presence of ncurses
> (bad example, since i think freebsd has ncurses in base, but ykwim)

OpenBSD seems to do that too. I had installed python 2.5 and when I 
installed something else (I think it was GIMP) it downloaded python 2.6. 
Maybe I missed your point?


> 2. isolates dependencies so that dangling or hidden dependencies just
> do not happen.

Can you explain this part? I'm a noob to all BSD.


> for more on buildlink, see
>
>         http://www.netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/buildlink.html

*click*

Daniel.
--
I'm not overweight, I'm undertall.