DragonFly pkgsrc policy for packages without freely or generally available sources
Pkgsrc will occasionally maintain packages in the repository that no longer have retrievable source tarballs and also legally restrict others from hosting copies of them. The justification is that some older users may still be in possession of the source tarballs, and the package is maintained for these very few people. Personally I disagree with this philosophy. Pkgsrc packages should be buildable by anyone as a minimum requirement for being a package, and if this capability is lost, I believe the package should be removed from pkgsrc once it's clear the capability will never be regained. Along the same vein, there are some packages that depend on sources that one has to purchase. I wouldn't be shocked if all of these only worked for NetBSD only. Since the unavailable packages aren't getting removed upstream, I'm going to mark them all NOT-FOR-DRAGONFLY. Currently this is less than 10 packages. The ones depending on commercially-purchased source tarballs will also be marked NOT-FOR-DRAGONFLY. For the vast majority of users, this will not affect you in the least (unless you run the bulk build script, then your life will improve). If you find yourself with sources to build one of these packages, you can simply comment out the NOT-FOR-PLATFORM+= DragonFly-*-* line in the Makefile before trying to build it. John
Re: DragonFly pkgsrc policy for packages without freely or generally available sources
On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 8:29 AM, John Marino dragonfly...@marino.st wrote: Pkgsrc will occasionally maintain packages in the repository that no longer have retrievable source tarballs and also legally restrict others from hosting copies of them. The justification is that some older users may still be in possession of the source tarballs, and the package is maintained for these very few people. Personally I disagree with this philosophy. Pkgsrc packages should be buildable by anyone as a minimum requirement for being a package, and if this capability is lost, I believe the package should be removed from pkgsrc once it's clear the capability will never be regained. Along the same vein, there are some packages that depend on sources that one has to purchase. I wouldn't be shocked if all of these only worked for NetBSD only. Since the unavailable packages aren't getting removed upstream, I'm going to mark them all NOT-FOR-DRAGONFLY. Currently this is less than 10 packages. The ones depending on commercially-purchased source tarballs will also be marked NOT-FOR-DRAGONFLY. For the vast majority of users, this will not affect you in the least (unless you run the bulk build script, then your life will improve). If you find yourself with sources to build one of these packages, you can simply comment out the NOT-FOR-PLATFORM+= DragonFly-*-* line in the Makefile before trying to build it. Just for reference, can you point of some/all of these packages? Thanks! -- vs; http://ops101.org/4k/
Re: DragonFly pkgsrc policy for packages without freely or generally available sources
On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 8:29 AM, John Marino dragonfly...@marino.st wrote: Personally I disagree with this philosophy. Pkgsrc packages should be buildable by anyone as a minimum requirement for being a package, and if this capability is lost, I believe the package should be removed from pkgsrc once it's clear the capability will never be regained. Along the same vein, there are some packages that depend on sources that one has to purchase. I wouldn't be shocked if all of these only worked for NetBSD only. Syntactically, it bugs me, because NOT-FOR-PLATFORM usually indicates there's something wrong that keeps it from building on a given platform, and what this really is should be PROBABLY-WILL-NEVER-BUILD-ANYWAY. It's a fix that adds noise to the makefiles. However, I'm complaining about form, not purpose, so my complaint is irrelevant.
Re: DragonFly pkgsrc policy for packages without freely or generally available sources
On 5/19/2012 17:13, Justin Sherrill wrote: On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 8:29 AM, John Marinodragonfly...@marino.st wrote: Personally I disagree with this philosophy. Pkgsrc packages should be buildable by anyone as a minimum requirement for being a package, and if this capability is lost, I believe the package should be removed from pkgsrc once it's clear the capability will never be regained. Along the same vein, there are some packages that depend on sources that one has to purchase. I wouldn't be shocked if all of these only worked for NetBSD only. Syntactically, it bugs me, because NOT-FOR-PLATFORM usually indicates there's something wrong that keeps it from building on a given platform, and what this really is should be PROBABLY-WILL-NEVER-BUILD-ANYWAY. It's a fix that adds noise to the makefiles. However, I'm complaining about form, not purpose, so my complaint is irrelevant. It's the best compromise. NOT-FOR-PLATFORM builds won't even be attempted. These packages don't need to attempt to fetch every bulk pass and show as an error in the report. So it's actually the opposite of noise - it suppresses known issues. I'm not concerned with muddying up Makefiles on these packages. It's a standard line and I've commented WHY it exists with a link to this archive in every Makefile. John
Re: DragonFly pkgsrc policy for packages without freely or generally available sources
On 5/19/2012 15:08, Venkatesh Srinivas wrote: Just for reference, can you point of some/all of these packages? Thanks! -- vs; http://ops101.org/4k/ Hi Venkatesh, The following eight packages were masked: net/skype1 cad/simian cad/simian-docs sysutils/ipw-firmware sysutils/iwi-firmware sysutils/iwi-firmware3 sysutils/storage-manager * games/ultima4-online * The last two are manual fetch packages which are fine normally, but the source files are no longer available. The Return to Castle Wolfenstein game was on the list, but I fixed the package by updating the MASTER_SITE. John
Re: DragonFly pkgsrc policy for packages without freely or generally available sources
On Saturday 19 May 2012 12:00:31 John Marino wrote: On 5/19/2012 15:08, Venkatesh Srinivas wrote: Just for reference, can you point of some/all of these packages? Thanks! -- vs; http://ops101.org/4k/ Hi Venkatesh, The following eight packages were masked: net/skype1 There's also a skype21 package. Is that available for DragonFly? Pierre -- ve ka'a ro klaji la .romas. se jmaji
Re: DragonFly pkgsrc policy for packages without freely or generally available sources
On 5/20/2012 04:19, Pierre Abbat wrote: On Saturday 19 May 2012 12:00:31 John Marino wrote: On 5/19/2012 15:08, Venkatesh Srinivas wrote: Just for reference, can you point of some/all of these packages? Thanks! -- vs; http://ops101.org/4k/ Hi Venkatesh, The following eight packages were masked: net/skype1 There's also a skype21 package. Is that available for DragonFly? Pierre Yes. Nobody can fetch the source for skype1. Skype removed it from their servers and won't allow anyone else to host it. Everybody can fetch the source for skype21. Therefore it's not masked. John
