Re: Pkg-based base system.

Gary W. Swearingen <underway_at_comcast.net> writes:
> Johan Pettersson <manlix_at_demonized.net> writes:

>> | Wouldn't it be nice to have a pkg-based base system? 
>> | So you easily can remove parts from the base system, like 
>> | openssh, ipfw, ipf, bind, sendmail and so on. 
>> | This couldn't be too hard to implement. :)

> Apparently it IS too hard, so let's dream of a system even harder to
> implement.  Someone should (sic) do it so well and so flexibly that
> almost all BSD users will want to use the same base system for which
> they will select their favorite BSD kernel (eg, FreeBSD's or NetBSD's)
> and their favorite applications (eg, one each of the most popular
> MTAs, firewalls, and CD burners), so that we don't have four or more
> teams maintaining and documenting a similar userland, while having the
> many people interested in kernel development able to continue their
> rather separate innovations.

Based on over 20 years of software development experience, my own
estimate is that this task would take a team of 15 to 20 full-time
employees 3-6 months to get up and going properly.  The split would
probably have to be 30/70 developers to QA people.  That would only
be enough to get you past the initial kernel incompatibilities, the
device driver generalization and integration, and the userland
reconciliation.  The applications stuff would have to come later
(but given that, compared to the above, it might be somewhat easier).

What you're asking for here is quite frankly something on the scale
of what RedHat or SuSE do for a living.  You'll need some solid
funding to do this.

Then you'd have the problem of convincing several hundred *BSD
developers to move over to it -- some of the most influential of
whom have a hard time even standing in the same room as one another,
much less agreeing to cooperate on large code changes.

Then you have to get several thousand, or tens of thousands, of
*BSD users to move over to it.  You'll have to be very convincing
to a lot of people to get them to change what they've been using.

None of the above is meant as sarcasm.  I just honestly believe that,
because you don't do software for a living, that you have no idea
of the enormity of the scope of the task that your blue-sky dream
here would entail.

mcl