Re: Help understanding pkgsrc snapshots

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

vom513 <vom513%gmail.com@localhost> writes:

> - This is no way intended to be anything negative against NetBSD devs.

Asking questions is totally fine.

> I’ve been playing with NetBSD 9.3 on one of my old sparcstations (32
> bit).

> - Take a look at http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/pkgsrc-2022Q4/ In
> that dir there are bundles that have the snapshot name in them, and
> others that don’t.  Very hard to tell what is what.  I would assume
> the ones with the snapshot in the name are the ones of that snapshot
> based on the file dates ?  What are the others with dates ahead of the
> snapshot date ?

These are tarballs from CVS checkouts.  I recommend using CVS directl.
(I do not use these tarballs.)

The central confusion is that pkgsrc-2022Q4 is a branch, and there is
also a tag that the branch is rooted at.  The branch is updated over
time (until the next one) for security fixes.  The one with 2022Q4 in
the name is the original branch content, and the one without is the most
recent version of the branch.  That is 25 March because once 2023Q1 is
created, we don't do anything further with 2022Q4.

> - Compare these two dirs:
> 	http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/amd64/
> 	http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/sparc/
>
> amd64 has a lot more subdirs, versions etc.  Not consistent.  Is this because of the “tier” status of the arch’s ?

Sort of.  Builds get done by people (within the NetBSD developers) as
they want to spend time, and as resources are available.  There are
NetBSD-owned resources for i386/adm64 and aarch64/earmv[67], and the
rest is basically hardware owned by individual NetBSD developers.  And,
as you know, it takes a long time to build things on sparc.

It's not so much that we have decided sparc won't be allocated
resources; you are just seeing what people volunteer to do.  (Which is
in my view very impressive.)


> - So as time moves on - I would guess older packages* dir’s get
> removed.  Are there any timelines/guidelines on when this happens ?
> My thinking is along the lines of say Ubuntu where unless it’s LTS (5
> years) - the intermediate versions repos go dark.  So running a
> non-LTS system - you will find you can’t (easily) install packages
> after such and such a time…

See archive.netbsd.org which has the older ones.

Basically, the last two quarters are kept.   See
  https://www.pkgsrc.org/quarterly/
and "Current vs. old binary package sets".

There are no pkgsrc LTS branches.  We create a new branch every 3
months, and at the time of creation maintenance stops on the old one.

If there are complete binary package sets for a newer branch, then you
can "pkgin fug" and upgrade all.   I do this on amd64, after making sure
that my package sets (that I build) have what I need.

It is a hard problem to have enough packages for what everybody wants on
sparc, without someone funding a cluster of 32 sparcs  and paying for
space/HVAC/electricity and sysadmin.