Re: Ports system quality
On Fri, Sep 02, 2011 at 11:49:48AM +0200, Julian H. Stacey wrote:
Hi,
Reference:
From: Julian H. Stacey j...@berklix.com
Date: Fri, 02 Sep 2011 03:07:40 +0200
Message-id: 201109020107.p8217efj089...@fire.js.berklix.net
I wrote:
Microsoft must grin at all us BSD, Linux, maybe Solaris presumably
even now http://www.minix3.org free source enthusiasts reinventing
similar old ports shims for same old 3rd party wheels:.
FYI:
http://www.minix3.org -
http://wiki.minix3.org/en/UsersGuide/InstallingBinaryPackages -
http://pkgin.net/
pkgin is known to work and have been tested under the following platforms :
* NetBSD 4.0
* NetBSD 5.{0,1}
* NetBSD current
* DragonFly BSD 2.0 to 2.8
* DragonFly BSD current
* Solaris 10/SunOS 5.10
* Opensolaris/SunOS 5.11
* Debian GNU/Linux 5.0
* Mac OS X 10.{5,6}
* MINIX 3.1.8
No /pub/FreeBSD/branches/-current/ports/ports-mgmt/pkgin .
I'm not familiar with pkgin, but nice to see OS co-operation.
Cheers,
Julian
pkgin is mostly driven by a single person, I really know well pkgin, because I
ported it to FreeBSD in the past. There are patches from Minix and Dragonfly
users, but through mostly things are done by the original author, and to help
portability but no much.
I have picked up some ideas from pkgin for pkgng and the last version of pkgin
picked up some idea from pkgng. (Me and Emile Heitor - the author of pkgin -
discuss and share ideas quite often about pkgin and pkgng)
regards,
Bapt
pgprzT70NAnyw.pgp
Description: PGP signature
Re: Ports system quality
On Fri, Sep 02, 2011 at 12:04:01PM +0200, Kurt Jaeger wrote: Hi! http://pkgin.net/ [...] pkgin is known to work and have been tested under the following platforms [...] So, what do you actually mean by this? Probably just this: What about trying to port pkgin for FreeBSD, so that pkgin can also be used on FreeBSD ? If this solves the binary pkg-install problem in a generic way on many plattforms (I have not looked at the implementation), that might be a nice feature. As I said I have done this, but finally went to pkgng because of some problem (version scheme between pkgsrc and freebsd differs) and other things. regards, Bapt pgplDLrLFeuYM.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Ports system quality
Baptiste Daroussin wrote:
On Fri, Sep 02, 2011 at 11:49:48AM +0200, Julian H. Stacey wrote:
Hi,
Reference:
From: Julian H. Stacey j...@berklix.com=20
Date: Fri, 02 Sep 2011 03:07:40 +0200=20
Message-id: 201109020107.p8217efj089...@fire.js.berklix.net=20
=20
I wrote:
Microsoft must grin at all us BSD, Linux, maybe Solaris presumably
even now http://www.minix3.org free source enthusiasts reinventing
similar old ports shims for same old 3rd party wheels:.=20
=20
FYI:
http://www.minix3.org -
http://wiki.minix3.org/en/UsersGuide/InstallingBinaryPackages -
http://pkgin.net/
pkgin is known to work and have been tested under the following platforms=
:
* NetBSD 4.0
* NetBSD 5.{0,1}
* NetBSD current
* DragonFly BSD 2.0 to 2.8
* DragonFly BSD current
* Solaris 10/SunOS 5.10
* Opensolaris/SunOS 5.11
* Debian GNU/Linux 5.0
* Mac OS X 10.{5,6}
* MINIX 3.1.8
=20
No /pub/FreeBSD/branches/-current/ports/ports-mgmt/pkgin .
I'm not familiar with pkgin, but nice to see OS co-operation.
=20
Cheers,
Julian
pkgin is mostly driven by a single person, I really know well pkgin, becaus=
e I
ported it to FreeBSD in the past. There are patches from Minix and Dragonfly
users, but through mostly things are done by the original author, and to he=
lp
portability but no much.
I have picked up some ideas from pkgin for pkgng and the last version of pk=
gin
picked up some idea from pkgng. (Me and Emile Heitor - the author of pkgin -
discuss and share ideas quite often about pkgin and pkgng)
regards,
Bapt
OK :-)
Suggestion: If He make some note about FreeBSD/pkgng on his page would help,
you could both cross link a See Also type href.
Cheers,
Julian
--
Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com
Reply below, not above; Indent with ; Cumulative like a play script.
Format: Plain text. Not HTML, multipart/alternative, base64, quoted-printable.
http://www.softwarefreedomday.org 17th Sept, http://berklix.org/sfd/ Oct.
___
freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
(Not replying to any particular post in this thread.) I think the current ports system in FreeBSD is not bad. Sure, it could be better (but this would probably require more manpower, which is a problem in a volunteer project), but it also could be a *lot* worse. I know of several people who are typical release users. They install a FreeBSD release from CD/DVD and use the ports or packages that came with that release. Usually that works very well because of the testing during the ports freeze that happens in preparation for every release. They never update (or maybe only when there are serious security issues) and happily keep using those very ports until they update to a newer release, one or two (or more) years later. The other extreme are people who run a cron job every night that updates /usr/ports (*) and runs 400.status-pkg (from /etc/periodic/weekly), possibly even followed by an automated update (**). Of course this will sometimes break. That's normal and to be expected, because the ports collection is changed and modified constantly by many people, except during freeze. There is always something that's broken. If you're affected, you need to postpone the update of the respective ports until someone (possibly including yourself) unbreaks it. That's the price to pay when you want to be on the bleeding edge instead of waiting for the next freeze and updating the ports to the release tag only. Personally, on my workstation at home I make a complete update every few months (2 to 4 times a year). If there are any security vulnerabilities reported by portaudit, I update the affected ports immediately, of course. (By the way, I use neither portupgrade nor portmaster, but a self-made script. However, portmaster really isn't that bad and should work fine for most users. :-) Finally, I recommend to install ports-mgmt/pkg_cutleaves and run it regularly after updates. It helps removing ports that you don't need. Rule of thumb: The less ports you have, the less dependencies exist, so updates will be less complex, and you're less likely to be affected by breakage. With that in mind, I keep the ports count on my workstation on a moderate level: $ pkg_info | wc -l 559 Best regards Oliver (*) For example: http://www.secnetix.de/olli/scripts/ports-check-update (**) http://www.secnetix.de/olli/scripts/ports-update-list -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M. Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606, Geschäftsfuehrung: secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün- chen, HRB 125758, Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd If you think C++ is not overly complicated, just what is a protected abstract virtual base pure virtual private destructor, and when was the last time you needed one? -- Tom Cargil, C++ Journal ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On 09/02/2011 02:24, Oliver Fromme wrote: Finally, I recommend to install ports-mgmt/pkg_cutleaves and run it regularly after updates portmaster -s does the same thing. FYI, Doug -- Nothin' ever doesn't change, but nothin' changes much. -- OK Go Breadth of IT experience, and depth of knowledge in the DNS. Yours for the right price. :) http://SupersetSolutions.com/ ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
Hi,
Reference:
From: Julian H. Stacey j...@berklix.com
Date: Fri, 02 Sep 2011 03:07:40 +0200
Message-id: 201109020107.p8217efj089...@fire.js.berklix.net
I wrote:
Microsoft must grin at all us BSD, Linux, maybe Solaris presumably
even now http://www.minix3.org free source enthusiasts reinventing
similar old ports shims for same old 3rd party wheels:.
FYI:
http://www.minix3.org -
http://wiki.minix3.org/en/UsersGuide/InstallingBinaryPackages -
http://pkgin.net/
pkgin is known to work and have been tested under the following platforms :
* NetBSD 4.0
* NetBSD 5.{0,1}
* NetBSD current
* DragonFly BSD 2.0 to 2.8
* DragonFly BSD current
* Solaris 10/SunOS 5.10
* Opensolaris/SunOS 5.11
* Debian GNU/Linux 5.0
* Mac OS X 10.{5,6}
* MINIX 3.1.8
No /pub/FreeBSD/branches/-current/ports/ports-mgmt/pkgin .
I'm not familiar with pkgin, but nice to see OS co-operation.
Cheers,
Julian
--
Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com
Reply below, not above; Indent with ; Cumulative like a play script.
Format: Plain text. Not HTML, multipart/alternative, base64, quoted-printable.
http://www.softwarefreedomday.org 17th Sept, http://berklix.org/sfd/ Oct.
___
freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On 2 Sep 2011 10:50, Julian H. Stacey j...@berklix.com wrote:
FYI:
http://www.minix3.org -
http://wiki.minix3.org/en/UsersGuide/InstallingBinaryPackages -
http://pkgin.net/
pkgin is known to work and have been tested under the following platforms
:
* NetBSD 4.0
* NetBSD 5.{0,1}
* NetBSD current
* DragonFly BSD 2.0 to 2.8
* DragonFly BSD current
* Solaris 10/SunOS 5.10
* Opensolaris/SunOS 5.11
* Debian GNU/Linux 5.0
* Mac OS X 10.{5,6}
* MINIX 3.1.8
No /pub/FreeBSD/branches/-current/ports/ports-mgmt/pkgin .
I'm not familiar with pkgin, but nice to see OS co-operation.
So, what do you actually mean by this?
Chris
___
freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports
To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
Hi! http://pkgin.net/ [...] pkgin is known to work and have been tested under the following platforms [...] So, what do you actually mean by this? Probably just this: What about trying to port pkgin for FreeBSD, so that pkgin can also be used on FreeBSD ? If this solves the binary pkg-install problem in a generic way on many plattforms (I have not looked at the implementation), that might be a nice feature. -- p...@opsec.eu+49 171 3101372 9 years to go ! ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On 09/02/2011 12:04, Kurt Jaeger wrote: Hi! http://pkgin.net/ [...] pkgin is known to work and have been tested under the following platforms [...] So, what do you actually mean by this? Probably just this: What about trying to port pkgin for FreeBSD, so that pkgin can also be used on FreeBSD ? We are working on pkgng[1], which is a complete rewrite of pkg_install instead of a higher level tool on top of it. Stay tuned for the alpha2 announcement. If this solves the binary pkg-install problem in a generic way on many plattforms (I have not looked at the implementation), that might be a nice feature. [1]: https://github.com/pkgng/pkgng ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
No /pub/FreeBSD/branches/-current/ports/ports-mgmt/pkgin . I'm not familiar with pkgin, but nice to see OS co-operation. So, what do you actually mean by this? Re-read: ] Microsoft must grin at all us BSD, Linux, ] ... reinventing similar old ports shims for same old 3rd party wheels I found a URL to a rare sample of co-operation. There's a German phrase about Tellerrand ... Its wise to occasionaly look beyond ones own soup bowl :-) BSDs should co-operate more, or lose. Linux is the small brother that's already outgrown us, offers more users jobs. NetBSD FreeBSD don't even speak the same language on ports. 17th Sept in ~600 cities globaly, will be http://www.softwarefreedomday.org Mostly Linux people last year here, with an occasional BSD person. ( BTW A Lot of Ubuntu CDROMs have been distributed world wide to cities ready for free give away; a few of us tried to arrange a BSD catch up, but time lack of a rich BSD sponsor for global mailing limited that. Please consider joining SFD as a BSD exhibitor in your city that day. ) BSD loses to Linux when visitors first ask Does it have packages for ... ? How to build/ install those ? Linux people tune out at different answers for *BSDs. Cheers, Julian -- Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com Reply below, not above; Indent with ; Cumulative like a play script. Format: Plain text. Not HTML, multipart/alternative, base64, quoted-printable. http://www.softwarefreedomday.org 17th Sept, http://berklix.org/sfd/ Oct. ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On Fri, 2 Sep 2011, Doug Barton wrote: On 09/02/2011 02:24, Oliver Fromme wrote: Finally, I recommend to install ports-mgmt/pkg_cutleaves and run it regularly after updates portmaster -s does the same thing. Well, sorta. How it chooses what to offer to remove is different. portmaster -s offers to remove just gle here, then nothing on subsequent uses. pkg_cutleaves offers to remove every root and leaf port that's not depended on by another port. ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
Doug Barton wrote: On 09/02/2011 02:24, Oliver Fromme wrote: Finally, I recommend to install ports-mgmt/pkg_cutleaves and run it regularly after updates portmaster -s does the same thing. No. pkg_cutleaves finds ports that I have installed at some point in the past and then forgot about (and never used again), and offers me to delete them. portmaster -s doesn't find those. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M. Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606, Geschäftsfuehrung: secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün- chen, HRB 125758, Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
Quoting Oliver Fromme o...@lurza.secnetix.de (from Fri, 2 Sep 2011 11:24:16 +0200 (CEST)): The other extreme are people who run a cron job every night that updates /usr/ports (*) and runs 400.status-pkg (from /etc/periodic/weekly), possibly even followed by an automated update (**). Of course this will sometimes break. That's normal and to be expected, because the ports collection is changed and modified constantly by many people, except during freeze. There is always something that's broken. If you're affected, you need to postpone the update of the respective ports until someone (possibly including yourself) unbreaks it. That's the price to pay when you want to be on the bleeding edge instead of waiting for the next freeze and updating the ports to the release tag only. No, that's the price to pay if you do not use all available tools. Personally I make a FS snapshot before updating. We should recomment to do this in all sensible places, and maybe even add code to portmaster/portupgrade which tells to make a snapshot if there is none (where possible). This way a rollback to a known good state is possible if someone gets hit by an instability (someone still can get hit, but the impact is a lot lower). Yes, I know that ZFS (the FS where it is very easy to snapshot and rollback) is not used everywhere, but the new installer for 9.0 offers now the possibility and we should tell the people what is possible now. Bye, Alexander. -- Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the Boss is reading it. http://www.Leidinger.netAlexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7 http://www.FreeBSD.org netchild @ FreeBSD.org : PGP ID = 72077137 ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
Alexander Leidinger wrote: Quoting Oliver Fromme o...@lurza.secnetix.de (from Fri, 2 Sep 2011 11:24:16 +0200 (CEST)): The other extreme are people who run a cron job every night that updates /usr/ports (*) and runs 400.status-pkg (from /etc/periodic/weekly), possibly even followed by an automated update (**). Of course this will sometimes break. That's normal and to be expected, because the ports collection is changed and modified constantly by many people, except during freeze. There is always something that's broken. If you're affected, you need to postpone the update of the respective ports until someone (possibly including yourself) unbreaks it. That's the price to pay when you want to be on the bleeding edge instead of waiting for the next freeze and updating the ports to the release tag only. No, Yes, it is. :-) that's the price to pay if you do not use all available tools. Personally I make a FS snapshot before updating. We should recomment to do this in all sensible places, and maybe even add code to portmaster/portupgrade which tells to make a snapshot if there is none (where possible). This way a rollback to a known good state is possible if someone gets hit by an instability (someone still can get hit, but the impact is a lot lower). Yes, I know that ZFS (the FS where it is very easy to snapshot and rollback) is not used everywhere, but the new installer for 9.0 offers now the possibility and we should tell the people what is possible now. I wrote that the price to pay is that you have to postpone the update of respective ports. And this is true, no matter if you use snapshots or not (or something else). Having to roll back to a working system is a problem that I didn't talk about at all. Snapshots can be used for this, of course. Personally I cannot use snapshots, but I keep packages of all working ports (created with make package or pkg_create -b), so I can easily roll back if necessary. However, that happens very rarely because I watch the mailing lists carefully before updates, so I notice in advance if there is any major breakage. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M. Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606, Geschäftsfuehrung: secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün- chen, HRB 125758, Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do. -- Dennis M. Ritchie ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On 09/02/2011 06:25, Warren Block wrote: On Fri, 2 Sep 2011, Doug Barton wrote: On 09/02/2011 02:24, Oliver Fromme wrote: Finally, I recommend to install ports-mgmt/pkg_cutleaves and run it regularly after updates portmaster -s does the same thing. Well, sorta. How it chooses what to offer to remove is different. portmaster -s offers to remove just gle here, then nothing on subsequent uses. pkg_cutleaves offers to remove every root and leaf port that's not depended on by another port. Fair enough. My feeling on that is that it's dangerous, since even though something technically may not be a dependency of something it may still be needed. Users can do 'portmaster -l' and look at the list of roots and leaves to see what could possibly be deleted, and then 'portmaster -e unwanted-port' will remove it, and then run portmaster -s when it's done. Doug -- Nothin' ever doesn't change, but nothin' changes much. -- OK Go Breadth of IT experience, and depth of knowledge in the DNS. Yours for the right price. :) http://SupersetSolutions.com/ ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
Kurt Jaeger li...@opsec.eu wrote: Probably just this: What about trying to port pkgin for FreeBSD, so that pkgin can also be used on FreeBSD ? Volunteers? ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 07:34:56AM +0200, Michal Varga wrote: - While nobody probably cares much about that guy and his missing browser images, what would you tell to the GIMP guy? That he should have waited longer before upgrading the (for him, 30 levels deep) Foo dependency? With furious client breathing down his neck and everything? Either we want to have ports as a big repository of colorful stuff that even builds, or we want to have some actual products that people can use after they build them. And that needs an additional level of quality control that FreeBSD currently, and horribly, lacks (patches welcome, I know). In that case, you should not be updating that rapidly. IMHO you should look at installing PC-BSD, who has a release process where they go through the apps based on a stable state of the ports tree, based on paid employees. - That particular maintainer of Foo graphics library should be forced, by threats of violence [...] And what happens if he doesn't respond to the threat? We fire him? Look: you can't fire volunteers. Only employees. And let's say that I, as portmgr, tried to impose some kind of rule about what's going to happen to you if you don't do things my way. The upshot? The volunteers will just leave. (They get mad when portmgr tries to bring some sanity to certain chaos-filled areas, as it is.) And why would anyone new agree volunteer to maintain a port if they knew that someone was just going to dump on them when it didn't work? You're not looking at this from the point of view of the people who actually do the work to bring you this system. mcl ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On Thu, 2011-09-01 at 04:23 -0500, Mark Linimon wrote: On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 07:34:56AM +0200, Michal Varga wrote: - While nobody probably cares much about that guy and his missing browser images, what would you tell to the GIMP guy? That he should have waited longer before upgrading the (for him, 30 levels deep) Foo dependency? With furious client breathing down his neck and everything? Either we want to have ports as a big repository of colorful stuff that even builds, or we want to have some actual products that people can use after they build them. And that needs an additional level of quality control that FreeBSD currently, and horribly, lacks (patches welcome, I know). In that case, you should not be updating that rapidly. I've covered that aspect earlier in the discussion. There is no option to 'upgrade less rapidly', as at any single point in time, there is *always* something that just hit the tree moments before. This would require all ports users always perfectly know every single port in their systems and have detailed knowledge about what exactly every single dependency does, affects, and when it's safe to upgrade this or that, and how soon to do it after a particular (and every single) commit. And letting other people get burned while simply waiting it out doesn't a quality control process make. Just stating the obvious. [And to cut it right here - no, answer to that is not Ok, so everyone should be a tester then. This never worked anywhere outside of dreams and wishes. And no other sane project does, nor tries to go this way.] IMHO you should look at installing PC-BSD, who has a release process where they go through the apps based on a stable state of the ports tree, based on paid employees. Telling people to go using different operating systems when they point out some shortcomings in FreeBSD was already pretty old some decade ago. While I'm not the kind of person to get in any way offended by it, I can easily imagine why so many get bittered by such 'suggestions' and eventually just leave for good. If I was looking for another OS, I wouldn't be wasting all this time pointing out what's broken on FreeBSD (or more specifically, in FreeBSD ports), I would be spending that time migrating, as I would have my options long time researched by then (which I have, actually, as significant part of my work depends on fully working desktop systems and FreeBSD no longer cuts it in that domain for some time). - That particular maintainer of Foo graphics library should be forced, by threats of violence [...] And what happens if he doesn't respond to the threat? We fire him? Look: you can't fire volunteers. Only employees. Yes, and you now single-handedly discovered what's the major point of failure in the current system (and I don't mean that as a sarcasm, nor making fun of anything). While I was making a hyperbole with all the violence and stuff, it still boils down to this. Nobody is really steering this ship anymore and it just happily rams icebergs along the way, with volunteers occasionally throwing buckets of water (and sometimes pieces of furniture) overboard to somehow keep it afloat for a while longer. The current mechanisms for dealing with ports (and their maintainers) were put in place ages ago in different times and with, frankly, somewhat different people around [citation needed]. Over the course of time, amount of ports grew by magnitudes, dependencies, especially for desktop environments grew by magnitudes, and maintainers are no longer the special dedicated bunch of highly motivated people that know every single port and their whole ecosystems inside-out. This is no longer even possible, among other issues (and there are few). But the system in place still pretends things work this way. They don't. Ports are failing, horribly. And it's not the concept that is wrong, it's the execution. Or more like, lack of any proper. But I'm all fine with pretending that nothing really happens and that few more automated -exp runs will save all and forever. Another five years from now, when FreeBSD definitely sinks into the realm of 'irrelevant' and when the finger pointing finally (and way too late) starts, I'll just bring some popcorn and quietly watch the show, just so that I don't offend someone again with my unsubstantiated whining. And let's say that I, as portmgr, tried to impose some kind of rule about what's going to happen to you if you don't do things my way. The upshot? The volunteers will just leave. (They get mad when portmgr tries to bring some sanity to certain chaos-filled areas, as it is.) Yes, and I remember some of 'those' situations. As we - the people who 'don't actually do the work' but sometimes actually use this system - for this or that reason even somehow keep track on what's happening around, as it's affecting both our short- and long- time FreeBSD decisions too. But you're just not doing enough. Doug too doesn't
Re: Ports system quality
On Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:47:40 +0200 Michal Varga wrote: On Thu, 2011-09-01 at 04:23 -0500, Mark Linimon wrote: In that case, you should not be updating that rapidly. I've covered that aspect earlier in the discussion. There is no option to 'upgrade less rapidly', as at any single point in time, there is *always* something that just hit the tree moments before. During a port's freeze or slush, maintainers are very careful about what's updated. If you only update during those periods there's very little risk of problems, and your packages will still be more up-to-date than in some Linux distros. This would require all ports users always perfectly know every single port in their systems and have detailed knowledge about what exactly every single dependency does, affects, and when it's safe to upgrade this or that, and how soon to do it after a particular (and every single) commit. You can still reduce the probability significantly. You can never reduce risk to zero. Personally, I don't recognise what you are saying. Over the last few years my desktop pc has fluctuated between 800 and 1400 installed ports, and upgrading has been very smooth. ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
Michal, Nice analogy ! Nobody is really steering this ship anymore and it just happily rams icebergs along the way, with volunteers occasionally throwing buckets of water (and sometimes pieces of furniture) overboard to somehow keep it afloat for a while longer. Furniture like sysutils/diskcheckd, mail/procmail etc was recently under threat of discard, from misguided preference to toss code alleged problematic, rather than investigate send-prs others said were problematic. Tossing to CVS Attic is no excuse, it's not something many release users have to hand, nor will they read ports@ etc between releases. Release users are what a company would call valuable customers. For FreeBSD they should be valuable too, include firms that use releases to create jobs, sponsor developers, promote BSD. But FreeBSD ports@ degrades releases with: Give no warning, dont mark deprecated on one release then wait till next release before removal, just toss out ports between releases with no warning. No principle of least suprise. Unprofessional. I've not known a clean build of ports/ I use in 10 years ( http://berklix.com/~jhs/src/bsd/fixes/FreeBSD/ports/jhs/Makefile.local ) But as I dont build in chroots, probably I should be grateful the can of worms is not bigger, with `/bin/ls -1 /var/db/pkg | wc -l` 1000 The mass waste of time with all major Unix projects maintaining their own ports/ packages shims/ skeletons to build generic software is scarey. Microsoft must grin at all us BSD, Linux, maybe Solaris presumably even now http://www.minix3.org free source enthusiasts reinventing similar old ports shims for same old 3rd party wheels:. A ports manager made a good point: there's a big investment of people skills in doing things the FreeBSD way. But that could also translate as: Our Titanic is too heavy to steer. FreeBSD ports infrastructure/ future history could be any of these: - Struggle on as is. - Accept we're in trouble, (as some NetBSD too accept), co-operate, get someone [ SoC students ? ] to design *BSD *Linux, a new cross/ OS shim set. (too scarey letting students do that pay some one else. ). - Get FreeBSD NetBSD foundations maybe wider to sponsor a new build structure with a limited number of demo ports. - Wait see if a firm does a Cygnus on us. ie what Cygnus did for FSF UX tools on MS, remove some pain charge some money. - Wait see if someone ports their Linux NetBSD or whatever ports shims to also work on FreeBSD. (just as Linux tools on a BSD kernel came as a suprise to us). - See if someone who produces RFCs takes a crack at defining standards for ports/ shims BTW I call 'em shims, cos the word ports causes problems in the NetBSD hardware ports camp, Cheers, Julian -- Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com Reply below, not above; Indent with ; Cumulative like a play script. Format: Plain text. Not HTML, multipart/alternative, base64, quoted-printable. http://www.softwarefreedomday.org 17th Sept, http://berklix.org/sfd/ Oct. ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
Chad Perrin wrote: Of course, your goal is apparently to convince me that yours are the correct priorities. Indeed i think having the correct priorities is essential when choosing between different options, and i am sincerely convinced that my choices are shared by a lot more people than yours. For example, having less bloat in the system doesn't even appear in the radar of most people. I value much more that hardware is supported, that installation and upgrade are easy, troubleless. Like everyone else i am irritated by some developments in the Ubuntu experience, for example the parallel booting stuff, which doesn't work well (but that people would like to imitate in FreeBSD), but all those problems remain minor. A few days ago i went to a store to buy a new laptop, i went with two CDROMs, an Ubuntu one and a FreeBSD one. Guess which of the two supported the network controllers in the laptops i tried? -- Michel TALON ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On 30 Aug 2011 10:15, Michel Talon ta...@lpthe.jussieu.fr wrote: Chad Perrin wrote: Of course, your goal is apparently to convince me that yours are the correct priorities. Indeed i think having the correct priorities is essential when choosing between different options, and i am sincerely convinced that my choices are shared by a lot more people than yours. For example, having less bloat in the system doesn't even appear in the radar of most people. I value much more that hardware is supported, that installation and upgrade are easy, troubleless. Like everyone else i am irritated by some developments in the Ubuntu experience, for example the parallel booting stuff, which doesn't work well (but that people would like to imitate in FreeBSD), but all those problems remain minor. A few days ago i went to a store to buy a new laptop, i went with two CDROMs, an Ubuntu one and a FreeBSD one. Guess which of the two supported the network controllers in the laptops i tried? Did you deliberately pick the laptops with strange network controllers, or just use an old version of FreeBSD? Which version did you use? Chris ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 11:13:58AM +0200, Michel Talon wrote: i went to a store to buy a new laptop, i went with two CDROMs, an Ubuntu one and a FreeBSD one. Guess which of the two supported the network controllers in the laptops i tried? And guess which of them ran binary blobs. ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 11:13:58AM +0200, Michel Talon wrote: Chad Perrin wrote: Of course, your goal is apparently to convince me that yours are the correct priorities. Indeed i think having the correct priorities is essential when choosing between different options, and i am sincerely convinced that my choices are shared by a lot more people than yours. You're right that having the correct priorities is good. You're probably right that more people have your OS preference priorities than I do. Popularity doesn't mean something is correct, though, and popularity of particular priorities for OS choice doesn't mean a given OS project should emulate those priorities. Would you suggest that every high-quality steakhouse in the United States should emulate the food preparation policies of McDonald's? The world needs an OS that serves the preferences FreeBSD serves so much better than Ubuntu, because the fact that a set of priorities favoring Ubuntu is more popular is not synonymous with the notion that it's ubiquitous. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpFAnTxlCcIv.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Ports system quality
On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 10:34 PM, Michal Varga varga.mic...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 21:00 -0700, Doug Barton wrote: I think it would be a mistake to believe that we don't have any quality control at all. I do think it's reasonable to ask whether what we have is adequate, and if not, how can it be improved. That's why I'm suggesting the stable ports tree idea as a step in that direction. I don't know that a stable ports tree is mathematically possible. I would suspect that if one was to consider all of the build options for some of the larger items, (even semi small ones like php) Most possible binaries have never been built much less tested. php as mod_php and fast-cgi and cli and cgi with and without su exec with support for imagemagick and gd and all the possible version of those and which of them have conflicts with the yaz extension (that only brick and mortar libraries use)? And this is very frequently used port. Might a more bazar type approach where the ports tree gave an option to report the build environment and a fail/success that is keyed to the cvs version of the ports? This is just a brainstorm, but considering the pain that debian QA causes debian developers, and the orders of magnitude larger task that QAing the FreeBSD ports tree would be makes me wonder if self reporting wouldn't be a direction to go in. Further down this path, a website could display for any given time the status of the ports tree: failed to build with defaults. -- red built with defaults and crashed upon loading -- yellow built and passed a simple did it run with out crashing test -- light green built and (arbitrarily chosen number by the ports team) people reported that it works. There seems to be a lot of emotion around this so maybe there is some extra energy that could make something like this happen? Also, anecdotal the ports tree is always/rarely broken, doesn't really help figure out how to make the ports tree better, and know if the change made things better or worse. Just my to pennies american.. Micheas snip ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 1:01 AM, Micheas Herman m...@micheas.com wrote: This is just a brainstorm, but considering the pain that debian QA causes debian developers, and the orders of magnitude larger task that QAing the FreeBSD ports tree would be makes me wonder if self reporting wouldn't be a direction to go in. What about a utility to list all installed packages built with non-default options? This might be helpful in identifying edge cases. -- Adam Vande More ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On 08/28/2011 22:34, Michal Varga wrote: On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 21:00 -0700, Doug Barton wrote: I think it would be a mistake to believe that we don't have any quality control at all. I do think it's reasonable to ask whether what we have is adequate, and if not, how can it be improved. That's why I'm suggesting the stable ports tree idea as a step in that direction. Now to be a bit more clearer, I didn't mean it in the sense that anyone can (or will) happily commit random crap to ports just to be done with it and go to movies, that wasn't my intention to suggest. By quality control, I meant first *ensuring* that the new port version will actually do something meaningful, other than, say, segfault everything depending on it. And not introducing it to the general population before that is ensured. The point that I'm trying to get across is that by and large maintainers already do that. The fact that in spite of those efforts problems still happen is part and parcel of the vast complexity of the number of ports that we have multiplied by the number of options. That's not to say we can't (and shouldn't) do better. Testing only for Does it still build? won't help much anymore if the new version silently broke one of the APIs and while Apache still runs with it fine Believe it or not, I understand that. :) The problem is that extensive run-time testing is not within the realm of possibility without an army of volunteers. Do you want to organize that effort? Now where I'm trying to get by this: Either we want to have ports as a big repository of colorful stuff that even builds, or we want to have some actual products that people can use after they build them. And that needs an additional level of quality control that FreeBSD currently, and horribly, lacks (patches welcome, I know). That sounds like PC-BSD to me. (Seriously, give it a try) Doug -- Nothin' ever doesn't change, but nothin' changes much. -- OK Go Breadth of IT experience, and depth of knowledge in the DNS. Yours for the right price. :) http://SupersetSolutions.com/ ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 23:30 -0700, Doug Barton wrote: Testing only for Does it still build? won't help much anymore if the new version silently broke one of the APIs and while Apache still runs with it fine Believe it or not, I understand that. :) The problem is that extensive run-time testing is not within the realm of possibility without an army of volunteers. Do you want to organize that effort? That would be the very opposite of the concept I just described. While extensive volunteer testing, if considered standalone, is surely not a bad idea (just that for some reason it never happens anywhere), it lies in a completely different scope than port maintainers *not* randomly upgrading dependencies just on their own without regard to other ports they will affect (and in many cases break, be it on build level, or run-time level). I just double checked if I possibly forgot to send the other half of my email, but nope, it's all right there. Now where I'm trying to get by this: Either we want to have ports as a big repository of colorful stuff that even builds, or we want to have some actual products that people can use after they build them. And that needs an additional level of quality control that FreeBSD currently, and horribly, lacks (patches welcome, I know). That sounds like PC-BSD to me. (Seriously, give it a try) Now that's like saying I might want to try *Linux and OS X too (I occasionally use both, just not as my primary desktop, which is FreeBSD). Speaking about PC-BSD, I'm not exactly fan of KDE and also, I find the concept of PBI packages highly offending. Then again, I can't see how would PC-BSD help in this case as it's the exact opposite of what I described. The fact that PC-BSD just tracks ports and builds self-contained packages from them doesn't automagically make them better product, it's still the same ports, but now just horribly packaged too. m. -- Michal Varga, Stonehenge (Gmail account) ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On 08/29/2011 00:07, Michal Varga wrote: On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 23:30 -0700, Doug Barton wrote: Testing only for Does it still build? won't help much anymore if the new version silently broke one of the APIs and while Apache still runs with it fine Believe it or not, I understand that. :) The problem is that extensive run-time testing is not within the realm of possibility without an army of volunteers. Do you want to organize that effort? That would be the very opposite of the concept I just described. While extensive volunteer testing, if considered standalone, is surely not a bad idea (just that for some reason it never happens anywhere), it lies in a completely different scope than port maintainers *not* randomly upgrading dependencies just on their own without regard to other ports they will affect (and in many cases break, be it on build level, or run-time level). Ok, I'll be more blunt. We don't do that on purpose, obviously. But expecting maintainers to do what you're describing is unrealistic. The only thing it would accomplish is a stable ports tree because nothing would ever get updated. :) Seriously ... I get what you're saying, I'm not even saying it's a bad idea, I'm just saying that we lack the person-power to do it now, and are unlikely to ever get to that point. I would also point out that from a project management standpoint developers rarely make good QA people. To do this right you really would want separate teams. Now where I'm trying to get by this: Either we want to have ports as a big repository of colorful stuff that even builds, or we want to have some actual products that people can use after they build them. And that needs an additional level of quality control that FreeBSD currently, and horribly, lacks (patches welcome, I know). That sounds like PC-BSD to me. (Seriously, give it a try) Now that's like saying I might want to try *Linux and OS X too (I occasionally use both, just not as my primary desktop, which is FreeBSD). Those are good alternatives as well. I use FreeBSD as my desktop, but it's painful, and I wouldn't do it at all if I didn't need to. FreeBSD needs to get better in this area, but I seriously doubt it will ever be as easy and painless as something like ubuntu. Speaking about PC-BSD, I'm not exactly fan of KDE They have other alternatives now. and also, I find the concept of PBI packages highly offending. Well that's just silly, but I'm not going to argue this point, I've spent enough time on this thread already. Then again, I can't see how would PC-BSD help in this case as it's the exact opposite of what I described. The fact that PC-BSD just tracks ports and builds self-contained packages from them And you're sure that's all they do? Seriously, I think you should give it another look. Doug -- Nothin' ever doesn't change, but nothin' changes much. -- OK Go Breadth of IT experience, and depth of knowledge in the DNS. Yours for the right price. :) http://SupersetSolutions.com/ ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On Mon, 2011-08-29 at 00:17 -0700, Doug Barton wrote: are unlikely to ever get to that point. I would also point out that from a project management standpoint developers rarely make good QA people. To do this right you really would want separate teams. As I said, that's not something that's in my power to change. In any case, it just leads (and always will lead) only to this outcome: Those are good alternatives as well. I use FreeBSD as my desktop, but it's painful, and I wouldn't do it at all if I didn't need to. Other OSes/projects, for some reason, are able to manage their maintainer base to much better results, and it shows. It can either be done here too, or the situation can be ignored for another five, ten years, until FreeBSD fades into obscurity, eventually getting known only as 'that OS where nothing works'. It's an issue that won't go away on its own. m. -- Michal Varga, Stonehenge (Gmail account) ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality and trolling
Am 29.08.2011 02:24, schrieb Jerry: On Sun, 28 Aug 2011 16:26:29 -0700 Doug Barton articulated: You seem to be operating under the assumption that we owe you something, and that by failing to provide that thing we owe you we have wronged you somehow. You may wish to take a step back and consider that premise in light of what you're paying for this stuff. :) So, to follow that statement to its logical conclusion, you are inferring that if user is not paying for a product they have no right to expect quality. OK, now I can better understand where you are coming from. Jerry, What I believe Doug is trying to say is that there is no formal agreement that would give you personally an enforcable right to a particular quality level of the ports@ tree at all times. Whether that agreement is incentivized by money or whatever else you may think of. I've spend one hour reading and figuring if there are constructive options raised in this thread and I'm sorry to say that those parts were mentioned days ago and nothing new was added in the past day or so. Can we put anything that doesn't specifically deal with how to actually fix the problem, or avoid it for the future, to rest in as far as this thread is concerned? I believe all that bears any relevance to this thread has been said in this thread. Thank you. Best, Matthias ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
on 29/08/2011 10:55 Michal Varga said the following: On Mon, 2011-08-29 at 00:17 -0700, Doug Barton wrote: are unlikely to ever get to that point. I would also point out that from a project management standpoint developers rarely make good QA people. To do this right you really would want separate teams. As I said, that's not something that's in my power to change. In any case, it just leads (and always will lead) only to this outcome: Those are good alternatives as well. I use FreeBSD as my desktop, but it's painful, and I wouldn't do it at all if I didn't need to. Other OSes/projects, for some reason, are able to manage their maintainer base to much better results, and it shows. It can either be done here too, or the situation can be ignored for another five, ten years, until FreeBSD fades into obscurity, eventually getting known only as 'that OS where nothing works'. It's an issue that won't go away on its own. Correct. So what's your personal contribution towards fixing that issue? E.g. finding out how other OSes/projects, for some reason, are able to manage their maintainer base to much better results and teaching that to us would be a great contribution. There are many other ways to contribute as well. -- Andriy Gapon ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 12:17:12AM -0700, Doug Barton wrote: On 08/29/2011 00:07, Michal Varga wrote: On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 23:30 -0700, Doug Barton wrote: Testing only for Does it still build? won't help much anymore if the new version silently broke one of the APIs and while Apache still runs with it fine Believe it or not, I understand that. :) The problem is that extensive run-time testing is not within the realm of possibility without an army of volunteers. Do you want to organize that effort? That would be the very opposite of the concept I just described. While extensive volunteer testing, if considered standalone, is surely not a bad idea (just that for some reason it never happens anywhere), it lies in a completely different scope than port maintainers *not* randomly upgrading dependencies just on their own without regard to other ports they will affect (and in many cases break, be it on build level, or run-time level). Ok, I'll be more blunt. We don't do that on purpose, obviously. But expecting maintainers to do what you're describing is unrealistic. The only thing it would accomplish is a stable ports tree because nothing would ever get updated. :) Seriously ... I get what you're saying, I'm not even saying it's a bad idea, I'm just saying that we lack the person-power to do it now, and are unlikely to ever get to that point. I would also point out that from a project management standpoint developers rarely make good QA people. To do this right you really would want separate teams. Frankly, I think the one thing that would have the most dramatically and disproportionately positive effect on the quality and stability of ports would be an improvement in the toolsets available for porters -- not just the tools themselves, but the introduction to using them. Consider, for instance, the possibility of an automated system with minimal configuration and command syntax for pulling a port from a nonstandard source while still managing it using the standard ports system; it would make user testing much more palatable, even inviting, and thus make it easier for a port maintainer to encourage interested acquaintances to help test a port under varied conditions before it gets committed to the official ports tree. While I'm not a huge fan of the way the first chromium browser port's maintainer handled his hybrid source business model, I also think it would be nice to have a system for installation and management of nonstandard ports using the standard ports tools for purposes of offering a way for third-party software repositories to be offered for easy inclusion, too (let the buyer beware, of course). I'm pretty new to learning about how ports are maintained, so it's possible I've missed something -- but if I have, we're desperately lacking the sort of documentation that would make this stuff obvious and accessible to users and, perhaps, to port maintainers as well. I'd be happy to be shown where I am wrong about the lack of such facilities, of course. I'm sure that, if I am wrong about it, there are many other people out there who would be happy to discover that their inability to find reference to such facilities would be happy to be educated about the existence of such things, too. That sounds like PC-BSD to me. (Seriously, give it a try) Now that's like saying I might want to try *Linux and OS X too (I occasionally use both, just not as my primary desktop, which is FreeBSD). Those are good alternatives as well. I use FreeBSD as my desktop, but it's painful, and I wouldn't do it at all if I didn't need to. FreeBSD needs to get better in this area, but I seriously doubt it will ever be as easy and painless as something like ubuntu. For a great many use cases, Ubuntu is one of the most painful desktop user experiences I have ever encountered. Please, *please* do not emulate Ubuntu. Fundamental operations change with the blowing of the wind in Ubuntu for no good reason; its don't make the user think philosophy is taken to an absurd extreme that often results in it not only making decisions against the user's interests, but also *changing* a user's choices later on down the road; it installs software and runs servers the user will never have any occasion to use, with no obvious way to deactivate them; and it essentially enforces the use of huge collections of software by way of hopelessly intertangled dependencies. There's more, but I need to stop some time, because this is not a forum for Ubuntu-related discussion. The difficulties of using a desktop system built on the Ubuntu way of doing things is not easy and painless for a nontrivial selection of users, especially developers. I know people who work for Canonical on Ubuntu development who lament some of the difficulties of dealing with Ubuntu and, as my girlfriend once said (paraphrased), If I wanted to deal with this crap I'd be using Windows. I use FreeBSD on my
Re: Ports system quality
Chad Perrin said: On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 12:17:12AM -0700, Doug Barton wrote: FreeBSD needs to get better in this area, but I seriously doubt it will ever be as easy and painless as something like ubuntu. For a great many use cases, Ubuntu is one of the most painful desktop user experiences I have ever encountered. Please, *please* do not emulate Ubuntu. Any discussion on such subjects should begin by switching off the reality distortion field. For *my own experience* Ubuntu works perfectly OK, in particular all the hardware on my laptop works, suspend works, i have zero problem keeping the ports updated, etc. It is the completely no fuss solution. Wether FreeBSD needs to go in a direction or another is a different subject, but *please* be objective in your descriptions. By the way: it installs software and runs servers the user will never have any occasion to use, with no obvious way to deactivate them; and it essentially enforces the use of huge collections of software by way of hopelessly intertangled dependencies. is a sentence you can easily apply to any modern system. And most users could not care less that there is *bloat* on their hard disk. Anyways you can find a functional and installable desktop Ubuntu system on a simple CDROM, show me the same for FreeBSD and i will happily conclude it is less bloated. And for the same price you have on said CDROM a live system and an installer which is not a joke like FreeBSD one. Wonder why one system has more users than the other ... -- Michel TALON ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 3:44 PM, Michel Talon ta...@lpthe.jussieu.frwrote: Any discussion on such subjects should begin by switching off the reality distortion field. For *my own experience* Ubuntu works perfectly OK, in particular all the hardware on my laptop works, suspend works, i have zero problem keeping the ports updated, etc. It is the completely no fuss solution. Wether FreeBSD needs to go in a direction or another is a different subject, but *please* be objective in your descriptions. I can cite more anecdotal evidence to the contrary but that will just perpetuate this infinite regression. is a sentence you can easily apply to any modern system. And most users could not care less that there is *bloat* on their hard disk. Anyways you can find a functional and installable desktop Ubuntu system on a simple CDROM, show me the same for FreeBSD and i will happily conclude it is less bloated. ftp://mirrors.isc.org/pub/pcbsd/9.0-BETA1.5/i386/PCBSD9.0-BETA1.5-x86-CD.iso Your other concerns are just as easily answered if you look. -- Adam Vande More ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 10:44:27PM +0200, Michel Talon wrote: Chad Perrin said: On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 12:17:12AM -0700, Doug Barton wrote: FreeBSD needs to get better in this area, but I seriously doubt it will ever be as easy and painless as something like ubuntu. For a great many use cases, Ubuntu is one of the most painful desktop user experiences I have ever encountered. Please, *please* do not emulate Ubuntu. Any discussion on such subjects should begin by switching off the reality distortion field. For *my own experience* Ubuntu works perfectly OK, in particular all the hardware on my laptop works, suspend works, i have zero problem keeping the ports updated, etc. It is the completely no fuss solution. Wether FreeBSD needs to go in a direction or another is a different subject, but *please* be objective in your descriptions. There's no reality distortion field here, unless it's yours. Neither Ubuntu nor FreeBSD is objectively better. Each is better for specific use cases. Your *subjective* experience of no fuss is based on a wildly different set of priorities than me. If you prefer Ubuntu's usability priorities, I wish you'd just use Ubuntu, rather than try to convince people that it's objectively better than FreeBSD -- thus implying FreeBSD should emulate as if it is without flaws. By the way: it installs software and runs servers the user will never have any occasion to use, with no obvious way to deactivate them; and it essentially enforces the use of huge collections of software by way of hopelessly intertangled dependencies. is a sentence you can easily apply to any modern system. And most users could not care less that there is *bloat* on their hard disk. Anyways you can find a functional and installable desktop Ubuntu system on a simple CDROM, show me the same for FreeBSD and i will happily conclude it is less bloated. And for the same price you have on said CDROM a live system and an installer which is not a joke like FreeBSD one. Wonder why one system has more users than the other ... That would have been much shorter if you just said: I can't tell the difference between the two where it matters, and I have different priorities than you. Of course, your goal is apparently to convince me that yours are the correct priorities. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpdXqRj9e1sN.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Ports system quality and trolling
On Sun, 28 Aug 2011 14:43:14 -0700 Doug Barton articulated: On 8/28/2011 1:54 PM, Michal Varga wrote: On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 15:30 -0400, Sahil Tandon wrote: [...] Criminal? Indifference? This sort of troll-ish hyperbole is decidedly unhelpful. FWIW, I agree with Sahil that this post of Jerry's was over the top, as several of his have been of late. To use the word criminal in this context is sufficient all on its own. To accuse people who spend an enormous amount of their own free time trying to make this thing work of being indifferent is just plain rude. Specifically, I said borders on criminal. Get your facts straight. Second, I was specifically referring to the act, not the individual. In addition, Spending enormous amounts of time != valid excuse. A mass murderer can spend enormous amounts of time planning his crime. Does that absolve him from the actual crime? To contribute my random few cents to the debate (without actually contributing anything of worth, so you don't really have to read it): Replies like these already made me discard like 20 of my own emails in the past, mid-write, exactly because of this expected outcome - accusations of trolling, because, why not, that's really what it's all about, right. Well, no. :) Personally I find this message of yours to be well thought out and well stated. You raise some valid concerns without making personal attacks. That kind of feedback is always welcome. So to say for myself - I do not know Jerry, but I definitely share his sentiments and even find his tone quite funnily (is that a word?) appropriate, as the ports quality, over the last year, went totally, horribly, down the drain. On some of my desktop setups, I keep about 900-1000 installed ports (and there are some ~200-300 for servers in general). There already seems not to be a single week, even once, without some MAJOR breakage that always takes hours (sometimes days) to track down and fix by my own ... FWIW, my experience has not been even close to yours, although I do find broken things occasionally. I have 1,112+/- ports installed on any given day on one of my machines. Your statement, without knowing your exact configuration, applications, etcetera is not a valid counter statement. It stands to reason that an increase in the number of ports used would show a corresponding increase in the number of port failures. And I know that every time I'd start writing a mail about it, my tone would be exactly the same as Jerry chose. With the expected result of Zomg stop trolling, First, if you find something broken, please report it; in a calm, factual manner; ASAP. That will help us fix it ASAP and help avoid other users having to share the same frustration. Second, if you have concerns about the direction that things are heading in a more general way, feel free to express them as you have here. You may find that people agree with you. :) And then again, you may not. or for a change, the ever popular megahit Patches welcome Sometimes that *is* the correct answer though. There is only so much that the existing pool of volunteers can do. If we don't get new people who are willing to get their hands dirty, the project dies. A quick death is often the best course of action. On a weekly basis, again and again, there are port updates being introduced with what seems to be absolutely no testing whatsoever, some breakages take multiple takes on fixing by their respective port maintainers, While I'm certainly not going to say that mistakes never get made, with very nearly 23,000 ports, and a nearly infinite number of possible OPTIONS combinations, shaking out all of the corner cases can be very difficult for even the most dedicated of maintainers. But, see below. new versions of major dependencies get introduced only to be rolled back few days later; If you're talking about the recent ruby update, an enormous amount of work went into that prior to the trigger being pulled in an effort to make it as smooth as possible. It's unfortunate that in spite of that effort there were still some issues that were only discovered after users rushed to perform the upgrade. In this case backing out the change was the responsible course of action. If this was an isolated issue, I would certainly agree with you. However, it has become the norm and not the exception for this sort of behavior. So, was really Jerry's tone so trollish? Yes. There is a world of difference between expressing concern about the issue (as you have done) and attacking people on a personal level. The root problem is group mentality. Attempting to convey a message that runs counter to the group is like making a statement against the Pope, or the towel head god, or what ever. People immediately become paranoid and defensive. They act like a group of school girls who have to have their egos messaged on a daily basis.
Re: Ports system quality and trolling
Including postmaster@ on this since IMO Jerry has earned himself a short vacation from posting privileges. On 8/28/2011 3:40 PM, Jerry wrote: On Sun, 28 Aug 2011 14:43:14 -0700 Doug Barton articulated: On 8/28/2011 1:54 PM, Michal Varga wrote: On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 15:30 -0400, Sahil Tandon wrote: [...] Criminal? Indifference? This sort of troll-ish hyperbole is decidedly unhelpful. FWIW, I agree with Sahil that this post of Jerry's was over the top, as several of his have been of late. To use the word criminal in this context is sufficient all on its own. To accuse people who spend an enormous amount of their own free time trying to make this thing work of being indifferent is just plain rude. Specifically, I said borders on criminal. Get your facts straight. I'm not sure why you think that makes a difference. The point that Sahil and I are trying to make is that both your words and your tone are, at best, unhelpful. No one who is involved with actually making things work around here believes that the system has no flaws. Quite the contrary, we know the flaws better than most users. But a constant stream of angry messages doesn't do anything to improve the situation. Second, I was specifically referring to the act, not the individual. In addition, Spending enormous amounts of time != valid excuse. A mass murderer can spend enormous amounts of time planning his crime. Does that absolve him from the actual crime? You seem to be operating under the assumption that we owe you something, and that by failing to provide that thing we owe you we have wronged you somehow. You may wish to take a step back and consider that premise in light of what you're paying for this stuff. :) FWIW, my experience has not been even close to yours, although I do find broken things occasionally. I have 1,112+/- ports installed on any given day on one of my machines. Your statement, without knowing your exact configuration, applications, etcetera is not a valid counter statement. And yet, you felt totally comfortable in criticizing it anyway. Without trying to toot my own horn (since this was a minor part of my overall point) I have a non-trivial number of ports installed on my personal systems, support hundreds more on (at least) 4 different combinations of FreeBSD versions and architectures on a regular basis, develop portmaster for people who are using it for massive package building clusters (as well as personal use of course), and receive portmaster-related bug reports from users of an even wider variety of ports. As a result I have a fairly good window into the state of the ports tree at any given time. But all that said, we have almost 23,000 ports. Intimate familiarity with 2,300 ports (a number much larger than I think is reasonably possible for any one person) would still only be 10% of the tree. It stands to reason that an increase in the number of ports used would show a corresponding increase in the number of port failures. Yes, I think you're right about that. And I know that every time I'd start writing a mail about it, my tone would be exactly the same as Jerry chose. With the expected result of Zomg stop trolling, First, if you find something broken, please report it; in a calm, factual manner; ASAP. That will help us fix it ASAP and help avoid other users having to share the same frustration. Second, if you have concerns about the direction that things are heading in a more general way, feel free to express them as you have here. You may find that people agree with you. :) And then again, you may not. or for a change, the ever popular megahit Patches welcome Sometimes that *is* the correct answer though. There is only so much that the existing pool of volunteers can do. If we don't get new people who are willing to get their hands dirty, the project dies. A quick death is often the best course of action. I'm sorry, why is it that you're using FreeBSD at all if you're so overwhelmingly dissatisfied with it? On a weekly basis, again and again, there are port updates being introduced with what seems to be absolutely no testing whatsoever, some breakages take multiple takes on fixing by their respective port maintainers, While I'm certainly not going to say that mistakes never get made, with very nearly 23,000 ports, and a nearly infinite number of possible OPTIONS combinations, shaking out all of the corner cases can be very difficult for even the most dedicated of maintainers. But, see below. new versions of major dependencies get introduced only to be rolled back few days later; If you're talking about the recent ruby update, an enormous amount of work went into that prior to the trigger being pulled in an effort to make it as smooth as possible. It's unfortunate that in spite of that effort there were still some issues that were only discovered after users rushed to perform the upgrade. In this case backing out the change
Re: Ports system quality and trolling
--On August 28, 2011 6:40:58 PM -0400 Jerry je...@seibercom.net wrote: I have no problem with that. No one should be forced to update their system if they choose not to. However, to carry your statement to its logical conclusion, you should issue a warning that attempting to update your system carries dire risks since the updates have not been properly tested. For the record, users knew exactly why the were updating ruby, they wanted to. If it was not to be used, then why release it? What they did not know was that it was going to bite them in the ass, like so many other updates (cups+gnutls) have lately. If it had been failing on a few obscure programs, then I could probably say it was an unfortunate oversight. When it starts failing on major applications used by a large number of FreeBSD users, then it should be labels what it is, incompetency. Opps, did I hurt someone's feeling? Well, you screwed up my system and wasted hours of my valuable time, so now we are even. My advice? Go find yourself a better OS and quit bitching about the one you obviously no longer like. Your complaints might be legitimate, but your tone, words and attitude stink. Ooops, did I hurt your feelings? Paul Schmehl, If it isn't already obvious, my opinions are my own and not those of my employer. ** When intelligence argues with stupidity and bias, intelligence is bound to lose; intelligence has limits, but stupidity and bias have none. ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality and trolling
On Sun, 28 Aug 2011 16:26:29 -0700 Doug Barton articulated: Including postmaster@ on this since IMO Jerry has earned himself a short vacation from posting privileges. Perhaps you would care to tell me yourself. It could be arranged. On 8/28/2011 3:40 PM, Jerry wrote: On Sun, 28 Aug 2011 14:43:14 -0700 Doug Barton articulated: On 8/28/2011 1:54 PM, Michal Varga wrote: On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 15:30 -0400, Sahil Tandon wrote: [...] Criminal? Indifference? This sort of troll-ish hyperbole is decidedly unhelpful. FWIW, I agree with Sahil that this post of Jerry's was over the top, as several of his have been of late. To use the word criminal in this context is sufficient all on its own. To accuse people who spend an enormous amount of their own free time trying to make this thing work of being indifferent is just plain rude. Specifically, I said borders on criminal. Get your facts straight. I'm not sure why you think that makes a difference. The point that Sahil and I are trying to make is that both your words and your tone are, at best, unhelpful. No one who is involved with actually making things work around here believes that the system has no flaws. Quite the contrary, we know the flaws better than most users. But a constant stream of angry messages doesn't do anything to improve the situation. Second, I was specifically referring to the act, not the individual. In addition, Spending enormous amounts of time != valid excuse. A mass murderer can spend enormous amounts of time planning his crime. Does that absolve him from the actual crime? You seem to be operating under the assumption that we owe you something, and that by failing to provide that thing we owe you we have wronged you somehow. You may wish to take a step back and consider that premise in light of what you're paying for this stuff. :) So, to follow that statement to its logical conclusion, you are inferring that if user is not paying for a product they have no right to expect quality. OK, now I can better understand where you are coming from. FWIW, my experience has not been even close to yours, although I do find broken things occasionally. I have 1,112+/- ports installed on any given day on one of my machines. Your statement, without knowing your exact configuration, applications, etcetera is not a valid counter statement. And yet, you felt totally comfortable in criticizing it anyway. Without trying to toot my own horn (since this was a minor part of my overall point) I have a non-trivial number of ports installed on my personal systems, support hundreds more on (at least) 4 different combinations of FreeBSD versions and architectures on a regular basis, develop portmaster for people who are using it for massive package building clusters (as well as personal use of course), and receive portmaster-related bug reports from users of an even wider variety of ports. As a result I have a fairly good window into the state of the ports tree at any given time. You have also asked for and I assume received monetary compensation for your services. In other words, get off your high horse. You are not some type of saint. But all that said, we have almost 23,000 ports. Intimate familiarity with 2,300 ports (a number much larger than I think is reasonably possible for any one person) would still only be 10% of the tree. It stands to reason that an increase in the number of ports used would show a corresponding increase in the number of port failures. Yes, I think you're right about that. And I know that every time I'd start writing a mail about it, my tone would be exactly the same as Jerry chose. With the expected result of Zomg stop trolling, First, if you find something broken, please report it; in a calm, factual manner; ASAP. That will help us fix it ASAP and help avoid other users having to share the same frustration. Second, if you have concerns about the direction that things are heading in a more general way, feel free to express them as you have here. You may find that people agree with you. :) And then again, you may not. or for a change, the ever popular megahit Patches welcome Sometimes that *is* the correct answer though. There is only so much that the existing pool of volunteers can do. If we don't get new people who are willing to get their hands dirty, the project dies. A quick death is often the best course of action. I'm sorry, why is it that you're using FreeBSD at all if you're so overwhelmingly dissatisfied with it? Perhaps I did not indite that simply enough for you. I was referring to the port or application that was broken; not the entire OS in its entirety. On a weekly basis, again and again, there are port updates being introduced with what seems to be absolutely no testing whatsoever, some breakages take multiple takes on fixing by their respective port
Re: Ports system quality and trolling
On 08/28/2011 17:24, Jerry wrote: On Sun, 28 Aug 2011 16:26:29 -0700 Doug Barton articulated: Including postmaster@ on this since IMO Jerry has earned himself a short vacation from posting privileges. Perhaps you would care to tell me yourself. It could be arranged. E ... huh? I really hope that's not supposed to be an implied threat of physical violence. Otherwise I completely fail to understand what you're getting at. On 8/28/2011 3:40 PM, Jerry wrote: On Sun, 28 Aug 2011 14:43:14 -0700 Doug Barton articulated: On 8/28/2011 1:54 PM, Michal Varga wrote: On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 15:30 -0400, Sahil Tandon wrote: [...] Criminal? Indifference? This sort of troll-ish hyperbole is decidedly unhelpful. FWIW, I agree with Sahil that this post of Jerry's was over the top, as several of his have been of late. To use the word criminal in this context is sufficient all on its own. To accuse people who spend an enormous amount of their own free time trying to make this thing work of being indifferent is just plain rude. Specifically, I said borders on criminal. Get your facts straight. I'm not sure why you think that makes a difference. The point that Sahil and I are trying to make is that both your words and your tone are, at best, unhelpful. No one who is involved with actually making things work around here believes that the system has no flaws. Quite the contrary, we know the flaws better than most users. But a constant stream of angry messages doesn't do anything to improve the situation. Second, I was specifically referring to the act, not the individual. In addition, Spending enormous amounts of time != valid excuse. A mass murderer can spend enormous amounts of time planning his crime. Does that absolve him from the actual crime? You seem to be operating under the assumption that we owe you something, and that by failing to provide that thing we owe you we have wronged you somehow. You may wish to take a step back and consider that premise in light of what you're paying for this stuff. :) So, to follow that statement to its logical ... I don't think that word means what you think it means ... conclusion, you are inferring that if user is not paying for a product they have no right to expect quality. OK, now I can better understand where you are coming from. I would never tell someone what they can, or cannot expect, that would be absurd. What I can say is, given the circumstances an expectation that all things FreeBSD will be perfect is not reasonable, and likely to lead to disappointment. FWIW, my experience has not been even close to yours, although I do find broken things occasionally. I have 1,112+/- ports installed on any given day on one of my machines. Your statement, without knowing your exact configuration, applications, etcetera is not a valid counter statement. And yet, you felt totally comfortable in criticizing it anyway. Without trying to toot my own horn (since this was a minor part of my overall point) I have a non-trivial number of ports installed on my personal systems, support hundreds more on (at least) 4 different combinations of FreeBSD versions and architectures on a regular basis, develop portmaster for people who are using it for massive package building clusters (as well as personal use of course), and receive portmaster-related bug reports from users of an even wider variety of ports. As a result I have a fairly good window into the state of the ports tree at any given time. You have also asked for and I assume received monetary compensation for your services. In other words, get off your high horse. You are not some type of saint. I never said I was. I'm simply pointing out that I actually do have a fairly good grasp of the situation. I'm also very lucky in terms of having been given financial support for some of my FreeBSD work, which is extremely unusual amongst our developer community. The root problem is group mentality. Attempting to convey a message that runs counter to the group is like making a statement against the Pope, or the towel head god, ... and here is where you go completely over the top. This kind of statement does absolutely nothing to add to the substance of your argument, and in fact detracts from whatever valid points you may be making. I can switch from formal academic language to a charmingly colloquial style depending on the audience. It got your attention so it obviously worked. I don't think that word means what you think it means. :) More to the point, I chose to make a last-ditch effort to try and communicate with you in a civil manner even though a lot of other people have written you off already (meaning, they are simply deleting your posts unread). I see now that I've wasted my time. Darn, did I upset you? The FreeBSD community in general has a wide and variegated opinion as to what is wrong with the OS in general. Attempting to stifle that is
Re: Ports system quality
On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 14:43 -0700, Doug Barton wrote: If you're talking about the recent ruby update, an enormous amount of work went into that prior to the trigger being pulled in an effort to make it as smooth as possible. It's unfortunate that in spite of that effort there were still some issues that were only discovered after users rushed to perform the upgrade. In this case backing out the change was the responsible course of action. I didn't want to mention the Ruby update specifically, because then the debate would turn into this or that specific issue, and honestly, maybe a year ago, I'd still think that it's really just about a specific issue in every single case. But over a course of time, I'm now inclined to see it more as a full picture, and that picture is, sadly, something just constantly being broken (yes, in the big picture). No matter how much some individuals invest into FreeBSD ports, the overall loss of quality control is pretty visible, and again - no single individual will fix that all. No two of them, no dozen of them. This is something that has to be fixed on a higher level, and a nice step in that direction would be a complete revamp of (currently like, close to none?) quality control procedures, and then require port maintainers (and commiters) to actually follow them, every time. Even if they are volunteers, and everyone contributes on their own time and resources, sure, but I would, personally, rather have 1 (or 1000, if there's no other choice) fully working ports again, instead of those 22000 there all the time untested, broken, or missing features or introducing regressions every minor update. Now, how do we fix this? It has been suggested numerous times that one solution to this problem would be a stable ports tree. The idea being that after changes have had a chance to shake out for a while in the head of the ports tree they get merged back to a stable branch. This needs to happen, yesterday. Stable ports tree *alone* as a solution is a waste of time (yes, I know how ridiculous that statement sounds in this thread, but-). There are only two possible outcomes of this, one worse than another: 1. Nobody will be using the testing tree, because it will be constantly superbroken (like, much more than ports are now). In theory, at least for some people, such tree would sound like a great idea to get your latest Firefox / Xorg / Gimp / whatever you like, but the dependency tree you will need to pull will basically overwrite half of your stable ports tree anyway, so you can as well keep using testing on full time. Which in turn means having everything broken all the time. Which in turn means, rarely anybody will be using it outside of port maintainer/commiter circles, which means you won't get any additional testing anyway. And / Or: 2. Stable tree will become terribly outdated, as every just a little bit complicated app comes with 300 dependencies (think of GTK/QT and all the way down from there). This means - do I want, as a maintainer, promote this new (and properly tested) Firefox to the stable tree? Well, but I will need you guys to promote me that latest GTK and right, recent gstreamer, and, uhmmm, some recent smb stuff and just a few more, and oh, they won't work without their latest dependencies too so in turn, we either end up with a ~100 port promote to the stable tree, or we will wait a few months until all the needed components get there on their own. So -stable tree will rot and nobody will want to use it because man, it has like already three releases old Pidgin, what good is that for? (which in fact is a security threat by itself, so probably not the very best example, but you get the basic idea). What is needed much more than two different port trees, is a cooldown period combined with *required* testing by port maintainers (and by port commiters), with some actual consequences if they fail to do so. Now this again sounds ridiculous (to some), shooting volunteers against the wall for breaking rules, so that alone is why this will never happen. But the fact is, that in the current state of ports, we advertise something that doesn't really work as a whole. As the current rules go now, port gets a go as long as it compiles, and that's why we have now those beautiful 22000 ports to advertise. Except that there is nothing that requires a port maintainer to know how their port is being used: Again, I'm not going to point fingers, but there was this little dependency port once that after one upgrade totally broke about every single GTK application. How so? Did the maintainer even briefly test it before submitting the new version? As it eventually turned out in a private conversation, he actually tested it pretty thoroughly, with one exception... Port maintainer was a server user and never even ran FreeBSD as a desktop system. And there is this minor issue, that his port is also one of the dependencies that gets pulled into every single GTK
Re: Ports system quality and trolling
On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 08:24:52PM -0400, Jerry wrote: You have also asked for and I assume received monetary compensation for your services. In Doug's case: a small percentage of his contributions over the years (e.g. for improvements to portmaster, which he had already written). I'm sure he'll correct me, but IIRC he has not received any pay for the great deal of work he has done over many years on the rc subsystem, bind, and the many other things he has worked on. I doubt even 1% of the time he's spent on the project has been compensated. The difference here is in the basic concept of how you perceive FreeBSD in general. You see what it is and consider it good enough. Well, now I've lived to see everything: someone imputing that Doug Barton thinks that FreeBSD is exactly OK as it is :-) Since you probably don't know me, let me be obvious. I'm on portmgr. And anyone on portmgr can tell you with an absolute knowable certainty that Doug Barton does not think FreeBSD is exactly OK as it is. I mean, if you really think that, you haven't been paying attention. Now, any casual reading of the mailing list archives will ably demonstrate that Doug and I have different styles and don't exactly get along. But if you think he's happy with the way things are, or doesn't care about the quality of the system ... I'm sorry, that's just farcical. You're living inside a reality-distortion field. Oh, by the way, YES, I do have the right to lash out. I am not your slave you moron. Nor is he yours. Or anyone else working on this project (including myself). But what he, and I, and a lot of other people who work on this project, deserve is to be treated in a civil fashion. In your postings that I've seen this week (no, I haven't read them all), you've made it quite clear that you have no interest in doing so. So: you have exercised your right to speak. And now, for myself, I'm going to exercise my right to not listen, and get on with useful work [*] rather than any more mailing list blather. In case that was tl;dr: plonk. mcl [*] so far since your first posting in this thread, that's consisted of resetting all the i386 package build nodes, cleaning up and restarting the i386-9 package build, writing a document for an upcoming infrastructure change, and the usual PR triage and maintenance work. ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Ports system quality
On 08/28/2011 19:43, Michal Varga wrote: On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 14:43 -0700, Doug Barton wrote: If you're talking about the recent ruby update, an enormous amount of work went into that prior to the trigger being pulled in an effort to make it as smooth as possible. It's unfortunate that in spite of that effort there were still some issues that were only discovered after users rushed to perform the upgrade. In this case backing out the change was the responsible course of action. I didn't want to mention the Ruby update specifically, because then the debate would turn into this or that specific issue, and honestly, maybe a year ago, I'd still think that it's really just about a specific issue in every single case. But over a course of time, I'm now inclined to see it more as a full picture, and that picture is, sadly, something just constantly being broken (yes, in the big picture). I can certainly understand how you could come to that conclusion, but like I said, that hasn't been even close to my experience, nor do I think it's representative of even a significant percentage of our users. No matter how much some individuals invest into FreeBSD ports, the overall loss of quality control is pretty visible, and again - no single individual will fix that all. No two of them, no dozen of them. This is something that has to be fixed on a higher level, and a nice step in that direction would be a complete revamp of (currently like, close to none?) quality control procedures, and then require port maintainers (and commiters) to actually follow them, every time. I think it would be a mistake to believe that we don't have any quality control at all. I do think it's reasonable to ask whether what we have is adequate, and if not, how can it be improved. That's why I'm suggesting the stable ports tree idea as a step in that direction. Even if they are volunteers, and everyone contributes on their own time and resources, sure, but I would, personally, rather have 1 (or 1000, if there's no other choice) fully working ports again, instead of those 22000 there all the time untested, broken, or missing features or introducing regressions every minor update. Now you're talking! :) This is one of the reasons I have been so supportive of (and made some minor contributions to) the effort to deprecate stale ports. There is also a lot more work to be done in this area. That said, it's you and me against all of the (very!) vocal people who believe that we shouldn't ever deprecate anything. Go figure. :) Now, how do we fix this? It has been suggested numerous times that one solution to this problem would be a stable ports tree. The idea being that after changes have had a chance to shake out for a while in the head of the ports tree they get merged back to a stable branch. This needs to happen, yesterday. Stable ports tree *alone* as a solution is a waste of time (yes, I know how ridiculous that statement sounds in this thread, but-). There are only two possible outcomes of this, one worse than another: 1. Nobody will be using the testing tree, because it will be constantly superbroken (like, much more than ports are now). I'd like to think that we can do a little better than that. :) I also think that a non-trivial number of users will want to use the latest and greatest so I'm not quite as pessimistic about this as you are. And / Or: 2. Stable tree will become terribly outdated, as every just a little bit complicated app comes with 300 dependencies (think of GTK/QT and all the way down from there). This means - do I want, as a maintainer, promote this new (and properly tested) Firefox to the stable tree? Well, but I will need you guys to promote me that latest GTK and right, recent gstreamer, and, uhmmm, some recent smb stuff and just a few more, and oh, they won't work without their latest dependencies too so in turn, we either end up with a ~100 port promote to the stable tree, or we will wait a few months until all the needed components get there on their own. So -stable tree will rot and nobody will want to use it because man, it has like already three releases old Pidgin, what good is that for? (which in fact is a security threat by itself, so probably not the very best example, but you get the basic idea). This I think is a very valid concern, and one that will have to be addressed with vigor. That said, I think that there are a lot of users who would find value in a ports tree that is overwhelmingly stable, as opposed to always being the latest and greatest. Also, see below. Again, I'm not going to point fingers, but there was this little dependency port once that after one upgrade totally broke about every single GTK application. How so? Did the maintainer even briefly test it before submitting the new version? As it eventually turned out in a private conversation, he actually tested it pretty thoroughly, with one exception... Port
Re: Ports system quality
On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 21:00 -0700, Doug Barton wrote: I think it would be a mistake to believe that we don't have any quality control at all. I do think it's reasonable to ask whether what we have is adequate, and if not, how can it be improved. That's why I'm suggesting the stable ports tree idea as a step in that direction. Now to be a bit more clearer, I didn't mean it in the sense that anyone can (or will) happily commit random crap to ports just to be done with it and go to movies, that wasn't my intention to suggest. By quality control, I meant first *ensuring* that the new port version will actually do something meaningful, other than, say, segfault everything depending on it. And not introducing it to the general population before that is ensured. See below. This is just one of those situations that won't get magically solved by just another ports tree. On the contrary, this is *exactly* the kind of thing that my idea would catch. More completely, my idea is something along the lines of: 1. Establish a baseline of what works with the existing ports tree via -exp run(s). 2. Branch the tree 3. New commits go to the head of the tree 4. Periodically, we do an -exp run with the stable tree plus selected updates from head. If the tree is no worse off than the baseline promote the tested updates, update the baseline, lather, rinse, repeat. And there comes the definition of a *working* port. It was pretty easy back when most ports consisted of five dependencies and like three of them were Perl. If it compiled, in 99% cases, it also ran. This no longer works in the scope of huge desktop environments like Gnome/KDE (or XFCE and other lesser players). Obviously, some server configurations suffer from this too - think of Java deploys and similar monstrosities with hundreds of dependencies. Testing only for Does it still build? won't help much anymore if the new version silently broke one of the APIs and while Apache still runs with it fine, no desktop user won't be able to boot his OS anymore (that is, boot into the desktop, which for number of people *is* the OS). Or let's just create a hypothetical situation: - We have this popular graphics library called Foo, which is a dependency of basically everything - web browsers, image viewers, editors (GIMP, Inkscape, whatever)... - Port maintainer decides to introduce a new version, but doesn't actually use or care for all the features Foo provides, so he tests it with his favorite image viewer, which he maintains too. So all looks good, port compiles flawlessly, even his vacation photos show ok, so all is done, right? (Raise hand everyone who just recognized at least 100 of the last commits where something instantly broke.) - Except that slowly over days and weeks after introduction, people now start asking on the list (or even worse, FreeBSD forums that nobody reads), why is their web browser missing images since the last week, or why his GIMP crashes every time he tries to edit his work-related 32-bit per channel designs (there's an internal joke in that). - While nobody probably cares much about that guy and his missing browser images, what would you tell to the GIMP guy? That he should have waited longer before upgrading the (for him, 30 levels deep) Foo dependency? With furious client breathing down his neck and everything? Yes, he will be eventually able to track the issue down and downgrade Foo to some working version, only after losing a full work day. I know, it's all his fault for not getting a Mac, but I'm still being in the hypothetical land so this still counts. Now where I'm trying to get by this: Either we want to have ports as a big repository of colorful stuff that even builds, or we want to have some actual products that people can use after they build them. And that needs an additional level of quality control that FreeBSD currently, and horribly, lacks (patches welcome, I know). I'm not saying that this can be solved overnight and definitely not by me, but there's at least one thing that can make the world better in that regard, if some enterprising soul introduced it, I don't know, maybe over a coming decade: That is, forcing maintainers to work together to maintain a whole product, not everyone randomly updating crucial components just because they feel like it's a nice day to do it. - That particular maintainer of Foo graphics library should be forced, by threats of violence, to consult his upgrade with all consumers of his port (that is, other maintainers of ports that use it as a dependency). - Maintainers of those ports should be forced, dunno, possibly by threats of violence, to actually test that proposed library upgrade with their ports and approve or block the upgrade (or somehow work together on a solution, stuff like that). - AND there should be an enforced infrastructure to make all that somewhat easy for them, with -exp runs being a part of that process (and a non-optional part to that).
