Re: NetBSD vs FreeBSD

["Jeremy C. Reed" <reed%reedmedia.net@localhost>]

On Thu, 4 Aug 2011, Daniel Carrera wrote:

> > 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.


pkg_admin fetch-pkg-vulnerabilities

pkg_admin audit

(oh I have much to upgrade :)

Some NetBSD developers maintain a text file listing packages that have 
vulnerabilities. audit-packages (the old name) is used to compare your 
installed packages with that list. The output gives a very short keyword 
description and a URL for details (for every match).


> > 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?


A new package should be installed consistently the same regardless of 
what you already had installed on your system.


> > 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.


One way is creating wrappers and symlinks for much of the dependencies 
and then forcing the build to use them instead.

(Not BSD specific.)