On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 10:25:32AM -0800, Scott Francis wrote: > On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 8:23 AM, Joshua Rodman > <[email protected]> wrote: > [snip] > > >> > * filesystem hierarchies that changes with the phases of the moon - > >> > this situation has improved somewhat in the past few years, but the > >> > related hate of package management systems that drop 3rd party > >> > packages into system-level directories > > > > And this one is just insane. > > > > The BSD people, whose package management system is pathetically > > inadequate, seem to feel that we must use all use an unnecessary, and > > yet inadequate hack of file locations in order to provide a semblance of > > order. > > > > I, for one, will be glad when all of that generation are dead. > > the ability to (for instance) tar up everything in /usr/local and know > for a certainty you have backed up everything package-wise that was > not part of the base OS install, allowing you to do a clean reinstall, > is useful.
No, it isn't. Firstly, the base OS install should be made of packages, or you've bascially made the entire base OS install one package which fails to support the features of other packages. Secondly, what use it to back up all the stuff relating to user-selected packages, if it might depend upon settings made in the base install? You've captured a whole set of files that are likely to not work. Hooray. Thirdly, with a sane package manager, you can capture the whole list of packages that are installed, and all configuration files for those packages, obviating the need for your whole tar operation, as well as handling things it cannot (as above) handle. Lastly, I now have /usr/local to store stuff that was actually installed by local user control, which is not package managed at all, which is the really fragile stuff. > If you haven't looked at the non-trivial improvements made in the past > few years following the complete rewrite of pkg_*, you are proceeding > on false assumptions. I have never used a ports system that didn't throw compilation errors during installs of *packages*. This includes last month. -josh
