BSD Version Of Gentoo's Portage

eugene ts wong writes "Here is some good news for BSD users. Gentoo Weekly Newsletter has an article that says that there is a BSD version of portage. It's still in a developmental stage, but it's definitely making progress."

Ease of Use for Package Management

[eugene ts wong]

1 of the things that I like about portage is the ease of use. You don't have to find dependencies. Nor do you have to find the web sites that host these packages. If you can find a place that's closer than the defaults, then you'll have the option of getting packages from there.

I think that these general advantages should be available all across the board for all OSes, unless of course there are specific needs for specific alternatives.

I'm not trying to start a flame war or anything. I'm just sharing my own likes & dislikes.

Re:Splitting the user base!

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Gentoo already forked; the coder base is split, though not sure about the user base.

ports vs. portage is a debate of utility. Its a meta-tool; how do I get the tools that I need in a better manner (* Better to be defined by the user). I sincerely doubt that the tipping point between selecting gentoo and FreeBSD is the difference in a metatool.

Re:Why?

[Arandir]

Don't know if it would be hard to get the same functionallity in the BSDs without using portage, or if there already are a few alternatives which works almost the same way.

There are things in FreeBSD that work almost the same way. But they tend to be much more specific than what Gentoo users are used to. They're informally called "knobs" and can be put in the global /etc/make.conf file to apply to everything, or used on a per-port basis. Adding new knobs is not that hard, but you have to go through and make sure the affected ports use them.

The biggest problem with the knobs is that they are not fully documented. For example, there is a very useful "WITHOUT_X11" knob that several ports respect, but which isn't mentioned in the Handbook or FAQ.

The "WITHOUT-X11" knob is described in the porter's handbook, but that isn't an end-user document, so many people skip over it. Perhaps the Handbook needs another page in the ports and packages section.

The software is only the smallest part

[R.Caley]

Who is going to meta-port the 7000 (or whatever it is) ports to whatever format portage needs it's information in and then keep them up to date?