very short overview of FreeBSD packages (fwd)

[David Billsbrough]

Scott Robbins wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 09:03:47PM -0500, David Billsbrough wrote:

>>> I am attempting to explain ports/packaging in FreeBSD
>>>  https://www.dropbox.com/s/q07d2ah7zlyv8d0/ports_and_packages.txt
>>> Did I mangle it too bad?

> The question is, what do they mean?  Do they mean the fact that it can
> literally take hours to install what may take a few moments in Linux?  Do
> they mean that they may have installed a package, then installed a port to
> find that it insisted on redoing everything the package did?  

In previous discussions with Steve, he hinted that building from source
takes a while bit LONGER than install pre-compiled packages.  I think
this is a given so Steve will have to decide for a given application
if have a machine starting with a minimal footprint and only building
packages needed from ports is a better idea.

For a machine of mine that servers as a web server I like the idea of
building from a ports system.  I do also run several Linux machines as
a primary desktop and for other projects.  For this web server running
a script to call portsnap and another to call portupgrade to keep this
system upgraded is fairly easy.  Warning though as you do need to keep
a very close eye to the contents of the UPDATE file and the notes that
apply to packages installed on the machine.


> So, I think I would certainly concede it's far from perfect.
> For someone who is used to a (usually) working apt-get or yum, it still
> requires some knowledge to mix ports and packages--on the FreeBSD forums,
> it's usually advised to not do so unless you have some idea of what you're
> doing.  

I haven't really mixed too many pre-built packages and build also with
ports system and really would NOT want to maintain a system that way.

Recently have tried running a image of FreeBSD 9.2 in an Oracle Virtualbox
to experiment with stuff I wouldn't be installing on a machine used as
a web server.  I might get to play around with 'pkg' and stuff in this
environment.

regards,

David
-- 
David Billsbrough (KC4ZVW)  Chuluota, Florida  Grid Loc: EL98kp
Web: http://www.kc4zvw.us --- Blog: http://kc4zvw.wordpress.com
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