NetBSD to Freeze pkgsrc Tree

jschauma writes "Alistair Crooks announced today that the NetBSD Packages Team will start a freeze on the pkgsrc tree in order to prepare for the release of the fourth stable branch, pkgsrc-2004Q4. The freeze will begin on December 6th 2004, and will last for a maximum of 2 weeks, during which the developers will bring down the PR count and fix problems shown by the bulk builds."

Re:I'm not dead yet!

[satanami69]

Too bad the article says you're going to be cryogenically frozen over the next two weeks. Hopefully I'll be around to welcome you to the world of tomorrow.

Questions

[Anonymous Coward]

- What does the PR count count?
- Is the pkgsrc tree the source tree for the entire distribution?
- Two-space tabs or three?

Re:Questions

[Noryungi]

What does the PR count count?

The number of opened bugs remaining in the pkgsrc tree.

Is the pkgsrc tree the source tree for the entire distribution?

Nope. The pkgsrc is the source tree for the software that can be installed on a NetBSD system.

Two-space tabs or three?

It's up to you. Edit your ~/.vimrc file to change this. You are using vim, right? ;-)

Re:Questions

[LizardKing]

What does the PR count count?

The number of opened bugs remaining in the pkgsrc tree.

Not just bugs. There are also PR's that include patches to update versions of the software in pkgsrc as well as new package submissions.

Is the pkgsrc tree the source tree for the entire distribution?

Nope. The pkgsrc is the source tree for the software that can be installed on a NetBSD system.

There's been an intermittent project to turn the base system into packages, but I don't have any references handy. For now, you can install Xorg from pkgsrc rather than XFree86 at install time, and this is what I've been doing lately.

Two-space tabs or three

It's up to you. Edit your ~/.vimrc file to change this. You are using vim, right? ;-)

Four spaces like the Lord intended.

Re:Questions

[hubertf]

What does the PR count count?

PR = Problem Reports, containing both submissions of new packages for pkgsrc, as well as problems with existing problems. Some of them with fixes included and easy to fix, others with no fixes included and only happening when you run them on some obscure configurations at full moon.

Is the pkgsrc tree the source tree for the entire distribution?

No, NetBSD is a complete operating system on it's own, with a defined set of functionality and programs, all in one source tree[1]. Additional 3rd party software for building a webserver, database server, desktop system etc. can be installed from either pkgsrc or a precompiled (binary) package.

- Hubert

[1] See cvsweb.netbsd.org [netbsd.org] for a web interface to the complete source of the operating system, running on 50+ hardware platforms in the "src" module.

Re:Questions

[DashEvil]

I really wish you guys would commit the patch for the nsec build issue. I don't know the details, and I can't find it on google now (I only find it by using the error message I get), but every time I go to cross build NetBSD from my FreeBSD 5.x i386 box to my SPARCstation (which I have to do because the 2.0 GENERIC kernel is too big) it fails on ./build.sh -m sparc tools or whatever. Then I have to hunt down the error message, find the patch, apply it, and it works.

I'm sure you're aware of it, is there any

Re:Questions

[DashEvil]

I got the patch from a PR. That's why I assumed SOMEONE knew about it. Everytime I try to do it, I get this error message - search for it - find a NetBSD PR with the patch. I mean, it's really easy to hit, just try to build the NetBSD sources on a FreeBSD 5 host. I'm sorry that I can't find the PR now, and that I don't know exactly what it is off hand.

metamod

[bhima]

just after I meta-modded the same comment as off-topic...

as a Cobalt Qube2 user let me say....WHOOT!

Great! So which version(s) of NetBSD can run this?

[RLiegh]

If I want to use their pre-built packages, do I have to be running the latest CVS, or can 1.6 handle it?

Re:Great! So which version(s) of NetBSD can run th

[jschauma]

The latest binary packages currently available are built under 1.6.2 and should therefor run just fine under 1.6.x (including 1.6.0). Given that the 2.0 release is coming Really Really Soon Now (tm), it's a pretty safe assumption that after the freeze the binary packages from the new branch will be built under NetBSD 2.0. Of course a 2.0 kernel can run older binaries (if you have the necesary COMPAT options(4) in your kernel). In addition, pkg_add(1) will warn/complain/fail depending on the discrepancy of the version under which the binary package was built compared to the version you are running.

Re:Great! So which version(s) of NetBSD can run th

[setagllib]

Actually that was originally said about FreeBSD before, and just hacked to say NetBSD instead. If you're going to troll, at least give readers some credit.

If I had my way Slashdot wouldn't allow anonymous posting to begin with.

Re:Great! So which version(s) of NetBSD can run th

[setagllib]

Not mentioned above is that you can set PKG_PATH to fetch the packages from a 1.6.2 (or whatever) directory on the FTP server(s). This is what you should do possibly in csh.login or whatever you use, but note that you have to unset PKG_PATH before doing pkgsrc work (it will warn you about this).

Any reason not to upgrade to 2.0, though? It's managed not to be bloated which is a huge plus. The only downside is that the new gcc is very slow (that's GNU for you) compared to 2.95, but can generate faster code sometimes. You can build and install a netbsd-2-0 CVS tree on a 1.6 system (build.sh) and install it right over. But remember - kernel (with COMPAT_16) first, reboot, THEN world!

Re:Great! So which version(s) of NetBSD can run th

[ulib]

[setagllib:]
>The only downside is that the new gcc is very slow (that's GNU for you) compared to 2.95, but can generate faster code sometimes.

[Anonymous Coward:]
Why not just switch to a BSD licenced compiler then?
If one doesn't exist, the BSD community could simply write it. It would certainly be faster, more stable and "cleaner" than any of the alternatives. I'm sure it wouldn't take the hordes of BSD developers more than a week to complete.
Of course the only evidence for this would be anecdotal and God

Errata

[ulib]

Damn my English.. This twisted sentence
"From time to time, it happens to say things in a way that offends some touchy people"
should have been like this
"From time to time, things are said in a way that offends some touchy people"
I should stick to shorter posts. Easier to proofread ;)

Re:Great! So which version(s) of NetBSD can run th

[setagllib]

ulib: Right on, and thanks for that.

It isn't enough for grandparent that Linus himself says the new gccs are slower than the oldies? (http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/4126 [kerneltrap.org]) Okay, you can try it yourself (install, however you do, gcc 2.95.x and 3.3 or 3.4 or whichever you think is the better one, and compile the same code).

The new GCCs support more targets with more optimization and this is of course helpful, and C++ support is actually good for something now. But this should not have come with such a h

*BSD is technically superior, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

..say what you want, there are reasons for using it that are definitely more compelling. :)
http://www.keltia.net/photos/Bellamy/Daemonette/da emonette_bg1024_tr.jpg [keltia.net]

Re:*BSD is technically superior, but..

[setagllib]

There are many more images than that, many of which include real women :)

But that's also good, worth keeping. Writing to my memory...
syncing brain... 42 7 done

Re:*BSD is technically superior, but..

[setagllib]

Number of dirty buffers left. Notice how they count down, and at 0, it's done?

It's more obvious in FreeBSD 5 which has a completely broken sync system, where dirty buffers sometimes go UP, and can take 30 seconds to sync it all... and wait for 3 consecutive 0s before completing. I remember when that change was first brought in and thinking "okay, time to move to NetBSD".

Re:Portability makes NetBSD different

[setagllib]

Exactly. As they say, when you have the same code run with the right glue on countless different hardware (especially CPU) configurations, you tend to notice problems much quicker. If something is bloated you might not even notice on a fast x86, but run it on a vax and it comes up. Security works the same way, and that's why OpenBSD ports, to see if anything comes up.

Some systems run on many archs but don't take advantage of it properly, by having redundant code and not abstracting properly. Defeats a big

Re:I Hereby Resign

[anynameleft]

That's why I use NetBSD and not *BSD.

Requiem for the FUD

[ulib]

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004) [internetnews.com]
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004) [netcraft.com]
"[FreeBSD] has a secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004) [slashdot.org]
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004) [slashdot.org]
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004) [netbsd.org]

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004) [eweek.com]
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004) [newsforge.com]

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment [mi2g.com]
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;) [keltia.net]

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Re:Requiem for the FUD

[mirabilos]

MirBSD: being out for >2 years, continuous improvements
in quality, actuality, smallity(?) and number of
both users and developers.

http://mirbsd.de/ for you.