Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering (Repost from -ports@)
Mornin', On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 05:23:15PM -0800, Garrett Cooper wrote: > Instead of asking all of the questions on a list, why not just direct > people to input information via a webpage? Seems to be a bit more effective > / less traffic than posting results to multiple lists.. Instead of sending the filled in questionaire to the list why not simply send it back to the original author as doubtlessly intended ...? ;-) Kind regards, Patrick -- punkt.de GmbH * Vorholzstr. 25 * 76137 Karlsruhe Tel. 0721 9109 0 * Fax 0721 9109 100 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.punkt.de Gf: Jürgen Egeling AG Mannheim 108285 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering (Repost from -ports@)
Andreas Pettersson wrote: Aryeh M. Friedman wrote: 1. What is more important to your personal use of FreeBSD (the ports system, the underlaying OS, some other aspect)? 2. How frequently do you interact with the ports systems and what is the most common interaction you have with it? Portupgrade a few times a month 3. What is the single best aspect of the current system? Installed ports are configurally very similar to the source distribution (no renamed config files etc), so it's easy to get support from the community. 4. What is the single worst aspect of the current system? I find it difficult to downgrade installed ports. 5. If you where a new FreeBSD user how would your answers above change? If you where brand new to UNIX how whould they change? Not sure. 6. Assuming that there was no additional work on your behalf would you use a new system if it corrected your answer to number 4? I think so. 7. Same as question 6 but for your answer on question 3? I think not. 8. How long have you used FreeBSD and/or UNIX in general? FreeBSD since 2003. 9. That is your primary use(s) for your FreeBSD machine(s) (name upto 3)? Firewall, development, misc 10. Assuming there is no functional difference what is your preferred installation method for 3rd party software? Ports 11. On a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the best) please rate the importance of the following aspects of the ports system? a. User Interface *5* b. Consistency of behaviors and interactions*7* c. Accuracy in dependant port installations *8* d. Internal record keeping *6* e. Granularity's of the port management system *?* 12. Please rate your personal technical skill level? Average Instead of asking all of the questions on a list, why not just direct people to input information via a webpage? Seems to be a bit more effective / less traffic than posting results to multiple lists.. -Garrett ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering (Repost from -ports@)
> As has been hashed out in -ports@ over the last few days there is at > least a need to examine weither or not the current ports system should > remain as is or potentially be re-engineered in the future (estimates > if and when needed vary from ASAP to 10-15 years). I have > volunteered to undertake a feasibility/pilot project to examine what > changes (if any) are needed in the system (for the purposes of this > thread I will not venture any of my own suggestions). I have the > following broad questions for people: > > 1. What is more important to your personal use of FreeBSD (the ports > system, the underlaying OS, some other aspect)? OS first and ports second, I came using the ports after few years building from source. > 2. How frequently do you interact with the ports systems and what is > the most common interaction you have with it? Weekly? Installing and upgrading when needed. It really depends on the machine too. > 3. What is the single best aspect of the current system? It is very consistent regarding the installation hierarchy. It may be different from the default used by one very product (example Apache under /usr/local/apache by default, but in /usr/local/etc/apache in FreeBSD), but it is consistent inside FreeBSD. > 4. What is the single worst aspect of the current system? Some problem of compatibility in dependencies when the system has 1000+ ports. > 5. If you where a new FreeBSD user how would your answers above > change? If you where brand new to UNIX how whould they change? Dunno, I am not new :) > 6. Assuming that there was no additional work on your behalf would you > use a new system if it corrected your answer to number 4? Yes. > 7. Same as question 6 but for your answer on question 3? ??? > 8. How long have you used FreeBSD and/or UNIX in general? Unix: 15+ years, FreeBSD: hummm, 8 years? > 9. That is your primary use(s) for your FreeBSD machine(s) (name upto 3)? Production servers for every thing (web, mail, file, DNS...) > 10. Assuming there is no functional difference what is your preferred > installation method for 3rd party software? portinstall or sudo make. When there are problem of compatibility I always end up doing the install manually. > 11. On a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the best) please rate the > importance of the following aspects of the ports system? > >a. User Interface 3 >b. Consistency of behaviors and interactions 9 >c. Accuracy in dependant port installations 10 >d. Internal record keeping 9 >e. Granularity's of the port management system 8 > 12. Please rate your personal technical skill level? Medium to high. Bests, Olivier ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering (Repost from -ports@)
Aryeh M. Friedman wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 [Repost from [EMAIL PROTECTED] As has been hashed out in -ports@ over the last few days there is at least a need to examine weither or not the current ports system should remain as is or potentially be re-engineered in the future (estimates if and when needed vary from ASAP to 10-15 years). I have volunteered to undertake a feasibility/pilot project to examine what changes (if any) are needed in the system (for the purposes of this thread I will not venture any of my own suggestions). I have the following broad questions for people: 1. What is more important to your personal use of FreeBSD (the ports system, the underlaying OS, some other aspect)? Mu. For me, the OS is nothing without the port, and vice-versa. 2. How frequently do you interact with the ports systems and what is the most common interaction you have with it? Daily. Updating, building for jails. 3. What is the single best aspect of the current system? For normal, day-to-day work on servers, it Just Works. 4. What is the single worst aspect of the current system? Compiling takes forever, especially on small-scale machines. 5. If you where a new FreeBSD user how would your answers above change? If you where brand new to UNIX how whould they change? A GUI would really help to get an overview and manage simple tasks. 6. Assuming that there was no additional work on your behalf would you use a new system if it corrected your answer to number 4? Yes. 7. Same as question 6 but for your answer on question 3? No. 8. How long have you used FreeBSD and/or UNIX in general? Five years. 9. That is your primary use(s) for your FreeBSD machine(s) (name upto 3)? Home server (mail, web, file), software development, small-scale production. 10. Assuming there is no functional difference what is your preferred installation method for 3rd party software? pkg_add to cut install time, but usually ports tree because of missing options in precompiled packages (e.g. no-gui vim, php5 with apache module). 11. On a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the best) please rate the importance of the following aspects of the ports system? a. User Interface 5 b. Consistency of behaviors and interactions 9 c. Accuracy in dependant port installations 8 d. Internal record keeping 8 e. Granularity's of the port management system 5 12. Please rate your personal technical skill level? Medium. Erik ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering (Repost from -ports@)
Aryeh M. Friedman wrote: > [Repost from [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > As has been hashed out in -ports@ over the last few days there is at > least a need to examine weither or not the current ports system should > remain as is or potentially be re-engineered in the future (estimates > if and when needed vary from ASAP to 10-15 years). I have > volunteered to undertake a feasibility/pilot project to examine what > changes (if any) are needed in the system (for the purposes of this > thread I will not venture any of my own suggestions). I have the > following broad questions for people: > > 1. What is more important to your personal use of FreeBSD (the ports > system, the underlaying OS, some other aspect)? Software builds correct and is present. Including a way to make my own custom packages for distribution. > > 2. How frequently do you interact with the ports systems and what is > the most common interaction you have with it? Daily, updating, and maintaining the ports tree itself. > > 3. What is the single best aspect of the current system? Its source based and re-uses and existing language (make) instead of inventing a new one. > > 4. What is the single worst aspect of the current system? Most ports don't deal well with multiple versions. Even apache which is versioned doesn't do it that well. > > 5. If you where a new FreeBSD user how would your answers above > change? If you where brand new to UNIX how whould they change? I'd want a gui and not to compile anything. > > 6. Assuming that there was no additional work on your behalf would you > use a new system if it corrected your answer to number 4? Quite possibly. > > 7. Same as question 6 but for your answer on question 3? (that doesn't make sense -- if you corrected the single best aspect of ports?) > > 8. How long have you used FreeBSD and/or UNIX in general? since 2.2.8 ~1998 > > 9. That is your primary use(s) for your FreeBSD machine(s) (name upto 3)? Desktop Development (SVN, imap, you name it) Production (FAMP stacks) > > 10. Assuming there is no functional difference what is your preferred > installation method for 3rd party software? source compilation -- except for things like Xorg, Firefox and Thunrderbird because they are just so darn big. > > 11. On a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the best) please rate the > importance of the following aspects of the ports system? > >a. User Interface 7 >b. Consistency of behaviors and interactions 5 >c. Accuracy in dependant port installations 7 >d. Internal record keeping 4 >e. Granularity's of the port management system 6 > > 12. Please rate your personal technical skill level? Very High -- Professional System Admin ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" -- Philip M. Gollucci ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) o:703.549.2050x206 Senior System Admin - Riderway, Inc. http://riderway.com / http://ridecharge.com 1024D/EC88A0BF 0DE5 C55C 6BF3 B235 2DAB B89E 1324 9B4F EC88 A0BF Work like you don't need the money, love like you'll never get hurt, and dance like nobody's watching. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering (Repost from -ports@)
Aryeh M. Friedman wrote: 1. What is more important to your personal use of FreeBSD (the ports system, the underlaying OS, some other aspect)? 2. How frequently do you interact with the ports systems and what is the most common interaction you have with it? Portupgrade a few times a month 3. What is the single best aspect of the current system? Installed ports are configurally very similar to the source distribution (no renamed config files etc), so it's easy to get support from the community. 4. What is the single worst aspect of the current system? I find it difficult to downgrade installed ports. 5. If you where a new FreeBSD user how would your answers above change? If you where brand new to UNIX how whould they change? Not sure. 6. Assuming that there was no additional work on your behalf would you use a new system if it corrected your answer to number 4? I think so. 7. Same as question 6 but for your answer on question 3? I think not. 8. How long have you used FreeBSD and/or UNIX in general? FreeBSD since 2003. 9. That is your primary use(s) for your FreeBSD machine(s) (name upto 3)? Firewall, development, misc 10. Assuming there is no functional difference what is your preferred installation method for 3rd party software? Ports 11. On a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the best) please rate the importance of the following aspects of the ports system? a. User Interface *5* b. Consistency of behaviors and interactions*7* c. Accuracy in dependant port installations *8* d. Internal record keeping *6* e. Granularity's of the port management system *?* 12. Please rate your personal technical skill level? Average -- Andreas ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering (Repost from -ports@)
On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 09:19:15AM -0500, Aryeh M. Friedman wrote: > 1. What is more important to your personal use of FreeBSD (the ports > system, the underlaying OS, some other aspect)? Yes. (i.e., mu) > 2. How frequently do you interact with the ports systems and what is > the most common interaction you have with it? Slightly more than weekly. Updating. > 3. What is the single best aspect of the current system? Most of what I want to use is in there, and builds and installs without fault or clashes. > 4. What is the single worst aspect of the current system? A toss-up between - inability to cross-build (not entirely fixable by ports, I know, but I'm sure that *some* ports would be buildable with appropriate cross-tools, and there's some chance that that set would include the pieces I'm interested in...) and - library dependencies don't extend to the base system. I've just spent a week un-breaking my GNOME environment after upgrading to 7-STABLE from 6-STABLE (which worked, as did all my existing ports) and then portupgrading (which broke nearly everything, because of the upgraded system libc.so, libz.so and libpthread.so->libthr.so, resulting in applications that depended on both old and new base libraries). A corollary of this is that portupgrade -af is not restartable if something breaks or requires manual intervention, which results in quadratic rebuild time, unless the whole process is managed manually. > 5. If you where a new FreeBSD user how would your answers above > change? If you where brand new to UNIX how whould they change? No idea. I haven't been a new FreeBSD user for a long time. If I were a new UNIX user, I might hope that things would work as they do in MacOS-X, and probably would prefer to use a GUI interface to pre-built packages, rather than the ports system at all. [That being the case, it's *most* important that the ports system be useful for the package-building farm.] > 6. Assuming that there was no additional work on your behalf would you > use a new system if it corrected your answer to number 4? Probably, but there are other aspects of ports that I like. I *like* that it's made out of make, and can be coerced into doing things *my* way, with little effort. At least I have the fall-back of using the NetBSD pkgsrc system. It is mostly Ports with some additional sophistication for portability. > 7. Same as question 6 but for your answer on question 3? No. If you break 3, you lose me to pkgsrc. > 8. How long have you used FreeBSD and/or UNIX in general? FreeBSD since '94, BSD since '85 or '86. > 9. That is your primary use(s) for your FreeBSD machine(s) (name upto 3)? Workstation (software dev.), production CVS/Perforce/Web server, experimental audio server. > 10. Assuming there is no functional difference what is your preferred > installation method for 3rd party software? Ports. > 11. On a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the best) please rate the > importance of the following aspects of the ports system? > >a. User Interface 1 (it has a user interface?) >b. Consistency of behaviors and interactions 8 >c. Accuracy in dependant port installations 8 >d. Internal record keeping 4 (this is only a performance issue) >e. Granularity's of the port management system mu (without having seen the discussion, I don't understand the question.) > 12. Please rate your personal technical skill level? Competent. Cheers, -- Andrew ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering (Repost from -ports@)
Aryeh M. Friedman wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 [Repost from [EMAIL PROTECTED] As has been hashed out in -ports@ over the last few days there is at least a need to examine weither or not the current ports system should remain as is or potentially be re-engineered in the future (estimates if and when needed vary from ASAP to 10-15 years). I have volunteered to undertake a feasibility/pilot project to examine what changes (if any) are needed in the system (for the purposes of this thread I will not venture any of my own suggestions). I have the following broad questions for people: 1. What is more important to your personal use of FreeBSD (the ports system, the underlaying OS, some other aspect)? Underlying OS. 2. How frequently do you interact with the ports systems and what is the most common interaction you have with it? Daily. Updating. 3. What is the single best aspect of the current system? Easy to implement ports. 4. What is the single worst aspect of the current system? Slow rebuild of portupgrade database (much improved in recent versions). 5. If you where a new FreeBSD user how would your answers above change? If you where brand new to UNIX how whould they change? In my experience, people from a Windoze background don't understand dependencies at all. Everything "just happens" under the hood during the install. This gives the impression that installing software works better under Windoze, but this impression is false. Dependency bugs (in the form of inconsistent/out-dated DLLs) have been a source of instability since the beginning. 6. Assuming that there was no additional work on your behalf would you use a new system if it corrected your answer to number 4? Yes. 7. Same as question 6 but for your answer on question 3? However, to be acceptable, porting software into the build environment as to be at least as easy as it is now. In fact, porting is far more important than installing. 8. How long have you used FreeBSD and/or UNIX in general? This is my 8th year. 9. That is your primary use(s) for your FreeBSD machine(s) (name upto 3)? Development, port maintenance, writing (desktop applications). 10. Assuming there is no functional difference what is your preferred installation method for 3rd party software? In the best of all possible worlds, installs would be self-contained (they would install correctly on the target with no intervention from the user). In the real world, I want 3rd party software to follow the ports system (whatever it may be). If 3rd part software does NOT track the ports systems, all manner of difficult-to-debug bugs will propagate. 11. On a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the best) please rate the importance of the following aspects of the ports system? a. User Interface a => 4 (but see GNOME, KDE, and Webmin) b. Consistency of behaviors and interactions b => 8 c. Accuracy in dependant port installations c => 10 d. Internal record keeping d => 6 e. Granularity's of the port management system e => 8 12. Please rate your personal technical skill level? High. - -- Aryeh M. Friedman FloSoft Systems Developer, not business, friendly http://www.flosoft-systems.com -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4 (FreeBSD) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHVBBj358R5LPuPvsRArclAKC8fVFVsva2DPmOQdTWw+/CT+wGywCfWvPl hbX2FSUdh6C61xTDJqnWf/M= =iCiu -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering (Repost from -ports@)
On Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:19:15 +0200, Aryeh M. Friedman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 1. What is more important to your personal use of FreeBSD (the ports system, the underlaying OS, some other aspect)? The "form follows function" of the whole FreeBSD kernel/userland and ports. Licensing ;) 2. How frequently do you interact with the ports systems and what is the most common interaction you have with it? At least once weekly, depending on system. After setup it's mostly keeping system up to date and interdependencies between ports in order. 3. What is the single best aspect of the current system? Very good tracking of dependencies, portupgrade etc, ability to make different ports mesh together. 4. What is the single worst aspect of the current system? Installing some stuff like X adds lots of noise into the "main level" of installed ports. Some sort of level system, showing only main port, at least in some cases might make it more manageable. 5. If you where a new FreeBSD user how would your answers above change? If you where brand new to UNIX how whould they change? I started using ports from the beginning and IMHO it's vastly superior compared to almost anything out there - The learning curve isn't that steep... 6. Assuming that there was no additional work on your behalf would you use a new system if it corrected your answer to number 4? If the new system was based on already tested and true concept - effectively the old system with minor tweaks. If it was some graphical horrendosity ported over from the dark side, I'd pass it... 7. If the new system corrected the worst aspect of the current system but broke the best aspect of it would you use the new system? No. 8. How long have you used FreeBSD and/or UNIX in general? Regularly 10 years. Mainly IRIX/FreeBSD/NetBSD with some very short tests of Linux etc. even before that. 9. That is your primary use(s) for your FreeBSD machine(s) (name upto 3)? Servers, firewalls 10. Assuming there is no functional difference what is your preferred installation method for 3rd party software? Ports 11. On a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the best) please rate the importance of the following aspects of the ports system? a. User Interface 8 (and this doesn't mean a pretty GUI but how the interaction of the user happens with the system - ports as of now are 7ish, 8ish level) b. Consistency of behaviors and interactions 10 c. Accuracy in dependant port installations 10 d. Internal record keeping 10 e. Granularity's of the port management system 6 12. Please rate your personal technical skill level? When in trouble can usually RTFM and solve it, not a c/kernel hacker -Reko ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering (Repost from -ports@)
On Mon, 03 Dec 2007 09:19:15 -0500 "Aryeh M. Friedman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [Repost from [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Please don't cross-post from questions@ to stable@ and [EMAIL PROTECTED] > 3. What is the single best aspect of the current system? That you can add custom patches to the csup-ped ports tree. > 4. What is the single worst aspect of the current system? Actually a few points: * Some ports lag behind current versions quite a lot while others are diligently updated as upstream does so. We need more port maintainers for those less-often updated ports. * gcc's performance for C++ is dismal: compiling big ports like Firefox/Thunderbird, JDKs, KDE/Qt, OpenOffice takes AGES, esp. on older and slower hardware. This is particularly painful when those ports undergo only very minor revisions. * portupgrade's/pkgdb requires way too much user-input to fix dependencies etc..; it's not a problem for experienced users, but newbies don't know how to reply to pkgdb's cryptic questions. I wished instructions for portmaster were added to those for portupgrade in /usr/ports/UPDATING more often. * Python ports are not versioned. When multiple versions of Python are installed simultaneously, it should be possible to install py24-* and py25-* ... ports simultaneously too. What I'd really wish to see happen: versioned ports! Say, you need portcategory/foobar-x.y.z for some reason, it would be nice to: # cd /usr/ports/portcategory/foobar # make -DVERSION=x.y.z install clean If at all possible, it would be also great to have multiple versions of the same ports available. We already have that for some selected ports, but it wold be interesting to have a more general solution. Of course, this requires a way to declare one of those versions the "default version" (that would e.g. set symlinks for includes, libs etc from generic to the current version of the selected port). > 8. How long have you used FreeBSD and/or UNIX in general? 20+ years. > 9. That is your primary use(s) for your FreeBSD machine(s) (name > upto 3)? Server farm + Desktops. Main development platform. > 10. Assuming there is no functional difference what is your preferred > installation method for 3rd party software? The current system is excellent. It could use some slight tweaks here and there, but overall, it is very usable and I'm quite happy with it, despite its (unavoidable) shortcomings. Regards, -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering (Repost from -ports@)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 > > > 7. Same as question 6 but for your answer on question 3? This should read: 7. If the new system corrected the worst aspect of the current system but broke the best aspect of it would you use the new system? - -- Aryeh M. Friedman FloSoft Systems Developer, not business, friendly http://www.flosoft-systems.com -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4 (FreeBSD) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHVBiR358R5LPuPvsRAndjAJ4/PtqzAQc0YGIlWkOMC2KU5KZeAQCeInKu ubr3E1ZhOylNLjIOvH+GZGg= =OkIP -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
