On 7/21/26 05:58, Will Tuladhar-Douglas wrote:
Dear brnrd (Bernard, I will guess?),
Thank you for setting up the Nextcloud port/package for FreeBSD. I
continue to be delighted by how constructive and supportive the FreeBSD
community is!
On inspection it looks as though the install is based on MySQL or MariaDB.
The ports tree permits building it with any combination of at least
one of MySQL, PostgreSQL, and/or SQLite but defaults to only MySQL
backend being enabled so altering that would require rebuilding from the
ports tree instead of installing the publicly available package. If you
do so, you will also need to apply updates by updating the ports tree
and rebuilding/reinstalling its copy. Tools like poudriere (used for
making the publicly available packages) and synth are available to build
it in a clean jail and you later install the package with pkg but
configured to your custom repository or pointed at the .pkg file itself.
. When I learned of nextcloud I remember at the time that users of the
MySQL interface discussed performance issues that didn't seem to be an
issue for PostgreSQL interface users. At that time some parts
(plugins/modules?) of nextcloud didn't support PostgreSQL. I never got
around to setting that up so I do not know where that currently stands.
The port could be modified to offer all backends by default but I
don't know if that would increase runtime dependencies or just build
dependencies would be needed and don't know if that expands possible
security vectors in a negative way. It could also be altered to have
flavors for each backend which would cause the FreeBSD public repository
to include each variety but every flavor is an additional build+package
step so I wouldn't expect them to include all valid backend combinations
if they added it.
If the port is being examined, it has some strange defaults like:
IMAGICK=off: Thumbnail support (recommended)
PCNTL=off: Long-running process control (recommended)
I assume if these are off due to issues that they shouldn't be
recommended and if actually recommended then they should likely be
enabled by default.
Nextcloud themselves are now recommneding that new installs use Postgres.
Sounds like a reason for the default to be changed with a heads up and
migration steps explained/referenced in UPDATING as I assume pkg-message
output can only display post-upgrade. If flavors can be offered then all
users can choose what they want and just need to make sure they are
informed if on a release that was not labeled by flavor.
I'm just in the process of bringing a long-established small Nextcloud
instance from Debian across to FreeBSD and as part of that am migrating
the DB from MariabDB to Postgres on the old server before bringing it
across to the new server.
Is there anything I could do to help extend the port to include a
Postgres backend? I have many years of (mostly amateur) experience with
Unix systems but am only recently returning to BSD.
It already has that but you could open a bugzilla problem report or run
`make -C /usr/ports/www/nextcloud -VMAINTAINER` (when you have a ports
tree at /usr/ports) to see who to email directly to either discuss
changing defaults or flavorizing it. I did not check if there were
previous PRs discussing this bu an initial search would be preferred.
Be well,
---WBTD.
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[email protected]
Will Tuladhar-Douglas
https://tending.to/garden
