[nycbug-talk] Fwd: svn - but smaller?

[Isaac Levy (.ike)]

Hi All,

I'm sorry to cross-post, but the conversation below has been brewing with a number of us, and I wanted to highlight it.

Best,
.ike


Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Isaac (.ike) Levy" <ike at blackskyresearch.net>
> Subject: Re: svn - but smaller?
> Date: January 23, 2013 12:05:25 PM EST
> To: freebsd-stable at freebsd.org
> Cc: Mike Tancsa <mike at sentex.net>, Mike Leone <mike.leone at axialmarket.com>
> 
> One of my teammates and I were just doing a write up on this very issue,
> 
> On Jan 23, 2013, at 10:55 AM, Mike Tancsa wrote:
>> On 1/23/2013 10:37 AM, Oliver Brandmueller wrote:
>>> 
>>> But my main concern is the system sources anyway. freebsd-update is not 
>>> feasible for me, as described in the original post.
>>> 
>> Actually, if you build the port minus the NEON option, its as bad in
>> terms of dependencies.
> 
> --------
> THE UGLY
> 
> Source for SVN:         496M (+)
> Source for FreeBSD 9.1: 746M (actual)
> 
> (df output details below)
> 
> -------
> THE BAD
> 
> After 15+ years of FreeBSD use, I remember what a great thing cvsup was when it hit.
> However, SVN presents several problems for OS use (again):
> 
> 1) License.  Many of SVN's dependencies will never be available in the FreeBSD source.
> While this is totally OK for development, SVN is 3rd party software, this is unacceptable to force as 'the' respected path for OS source builds.
> 
> 2) Heft: cvsup/csup was excellent for 1 thing: grabbing a REL branch.  Perhaps grabbing STABLE or CURRENT.  Systems administrators could QA/test new branches on massive numbers of servers quickly and efficiently.
> 
> --------
> THE GOOD
> 
> We've just resolved this for ourselves, and are wrapping it in a clean sh script:
> (I'd love to know where we can send it for input when we're done?)
> 
> 40 lines of shell could get the jist of what users really need:
> 
> - Download the src using fetch(1)
>  fetch ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/9.1-RELEASE/src.txz
> - Extract the tarball (to /usr/src, or wherever).
>  tar -xf src.txz
> 
> We're hacking out some simple script add-ons out right now for ourselves, to make this more CVSUP like:
> + flag to keep source tarball somewhere (instead of merely un-tarring it in a pipe)
> + flag to un-tar source to a particular directory
> + flag to specify OS version
> + flag to specify RELEASE, STABLE, CURRENT
>  (if they exist, CURRENT may be tricky?)
> + define source server/mirror
> 
> + source config in /etc, (or rc.conf ?), if exists
> 
> --
> Nice-to-have extra features (some necessary for us):
> + define protocol (tricky), e.g. ftp/http/https/other
> + after unpacking, run against mtree (possibly kept on separate server or locally) to validate sources
>  + exit non-zero if particular conditions exist
> + checksum tarball (possibly against checksums kept on separate server or locally) to validate sources
>  + exit non-zero if particular conditions exist
> + flags to override/change tar options
> 
> ++ also nice to have, more cvsup features, (I need to read through man page again for a sanity check)
> 
> 
> --
> Regarding SVN:
> 
> I know the SVN change is a profound leap foreword in source management and collaboration, (I've carried many shops through CVS/SVN/GIT migrations as an SA).
> 
> Developing/hacking in the FreeBSD source is already simpler, though as an outsider, (no commit bit), the transition has been expectedly rough-edged :)
> 
> On Jan 23, 2013, at 10:06 AM, Ronald Klop wrote:
>> I've read about this initiative.
>> http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/user/des/svnsup/
>> Maybe you can help there.
> 
> Aside from the heft/licence issues I noted above, it's a bit late to consider this, cvsup is going away:
> 
> - the *ports* CVS/csup infrastructure is going to be disabled on Feburary 28th
> 
> - the *source* CVS/csup infrastructure is deprecated, but doesn't have a definite end-date
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 04:12:22PM +0100, Frank Staals wrote:
>>> I'm kind of surprised for the need of this though. Why not simply use
>>> portsnap if you are not actively developing ports? 
>> 
> On Jan 23, 2013, at 10:37 AM, Oliver Brandmueller wrote:
>> But my main concern is the system sources anyway. freebsd-update is not 
>> feasible for me, as described in the original post.
> 
> 
> For users/administrators, to merely fetch OS sources for a given branch, it goes against the grain of nearly every reason users use FreeBSD to say 'just use svn'.
> 
> Additionally, it's not been fun recently to 'just use portssnap', when the actual binary ports servers have gone through the recent security incident, (as well as all the changes).
> 
> I'm not meaning to be negative here, but this has slid pretty far away from the ideals that *BSD users care about.
> 
> Best,
> .ike
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> # uncompressed canonical sources for svn (I believe I missed some dependencies of the dependencies)
> du -d 1 -h
> 5.5M	./apr-1.4.6
> 5.3M	./sqlite-amalgamation-3071300
> 13M	./libtool-2.4.2
> 79M	./perl-5.16.2
> 4.0M	./neon-0.29.6
> 66M	./Python-2.7.1
> 153M	./db-5.3.21
> 55M	./subversion-1.7.8
> 8.6M	./m4-1.4.16
> 3.0M	./expat-2.1.0
> 12M	./pkg-config-0.27.1
> 3.0M	./gdbm-1.10
> 67M	./gettext-0.18.1.1
> 21M	./libiconv-1.14
> 496M	.
> 
> ## FreeBSD 9.1 Source
> $ pwd ; du -d 1 -h
> /usr/src
> 3.2M	./bin
> 11M	./cddl
> 316M	./contrib
> 40M	./crypto
> 2.0M	./etc
> 3.7M	./games
> 5.9M	./gnu
> 1.1M	./include
> 484k	./kerberos5
> 31M	./lib
> 2.1M	./libexec
> 1.3M	./release
> 32k	./rescue
> 7.2M	./sbin
> 3.6M	./secure
> 39M	./share
> 200M	./sys
> 44M	./tools
> 13M	./usr.bin
> 18M	./usr.sbin
> 746M	.