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DragonFly kernel List (threaded) for 2006-02
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Re: pkgsrc packaging of base?


To: Oliver Fromme <check+iuh6ew00rs29fank@xxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Erik P. Skaalerud" <erik@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 18:36:51 +0100

Oliver Fromme wrote:
> Oliver, You have to put yourself in the new user's shoes. It's not easy > at all to manually patch sourcecode and rebuild the appropriate binaries > and libraries.

It _is_ easy.  The FreeBSD Security Advisories contain
detailed step-by-step instruction.
[snip]
So what exactly is so difficult about that?  Well, of
course it could be automated even further, by providing
a tool which automatically looks an advisory, then
downloads any patches, applies them etc., so the user
doesn't have to copy&paste "strange looking commands".
But that's just a detail, it doesn't change the way it
works.

Perhaps I'm a bit biased here, because I am one of those who can't quite figure out any good reason to keep compiling software, when todays modern computers are powerful enough that they wont get any advantage from optimizations. It's just a matter of providing binaries for different archs (i686,i586). Wich is something this discussion is about, putting userland and kernel into a package management system wich will make it easier for users to update their systems.


It would also probably make systems more secure with a tool that you described (one that downloads and installs security fixes with a simple command), as not all users subscribe to a mailing list to get security notifications. Windows Update and its agent is a perfect example.

I'm not saying that it's extremely difficult to patch sourcecode and recompile, I'm just stating that it should not be the only choice when we could have a much easier system for performing the task (like apt).

- Erik



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