Re: Compatability with FreeBSD Ports [debian package tools]

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2005 at 10:35:47PM -0000, Andreas Hauser wrote:
> hmp wrote @ Thu, 18 Aug 2005 02:28:19 +0100:
> 
> > >>Can we not use ports or pkgsrc as our build part of the problem, and
> > >>produce packages that are understandable by APT* ?
> 
> I am not at all convinced that some other backend solves the problem.
> But making ports/pkgsrc produce other binary pkg types would be cool.

For pkgsrc there is some support to convert packages into rpm or Solaris
style packages. But I agree that switching the backend doesn't solve
anything. dpkg doesn't offer much the current pkg_* don't provide, the
few things are more related to being able to handle cases like libc
updates.

> > Source level upgrades have always created some form of problem for me and 
> > it seems a lot of other people as well.  Definitely not something that is 
> > viable or trust-worthy.
> 
> No it's something you do on a special build host until you produce a quality
> of packages you are satisfied with. Then you distribute those packages
> to your other hosts. That is certainly power i am not willing to give up.

chroot and jail makes this easier, but again, I agree with you. It's the
same thing all Linux distros do BTW.

> It doubt there will be 10000 "perfectly working binary" packages.

The question of whether you can keep a snapshot of 10,000 packages
resonable current depends ultimately on the resouces you have to build.
It is possible, but autoconf tries hard to make more expensive.

Joerg