Re: Pkg-based base system.

> From: Miguel Mendez <flynn_at_energyhq.es.eu.org>
> Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 18:25:28 +0100
> Sender: owner-freebsd-current_at_freebsd.org
> 
> On Wed, 2004-03-17 at 12:09, David O'Brien wrote:
> 
> > 3. Sounds like you want Linux with its RPM's, not BSD.  We consciously
> >    don't wrap the base system in pkg_add tarballs.  We generally LIKE the
> >    entire system being a single integrated blob.
> 
> Yes and no. Perl was removed from base, wasn't it? Anyone needing perl
> can install install it from ports (read: it's one of the first ports
> most people install). Why can't the same be applied to bind and
> sendmail? Make them optional, at least. Most of the people I know never
> bother with sendmail and go straight for postfix as soon as the system
> is up. Having certain parts as optional and/or in packaged form can be
> beneficial IMHO, without going to the extreme of having everything
> packaged (e.g. libc, tcsh, etc). I think Colin's stuff deserves some
> consideration before throwing the idea out. But, OTOH, if FreeBSD=20
> committers don't like the idea, one can always fork(2).

Perl was a very difficult case. It can be argued that Perl is something
that the vast majority of users want on a system, but it is rapidly
developing code from outside of the BSD community. The inclusion of Perl
in the base system and its use by the system/kernel build and other
system tools made it almost impossible to update to new versions of Perl
in a timely manner.

After much discussion, it became apparent that having current Perl was
very important and, if it was in the base system, it would almost
certainly always lag behind where other tools required it to be. It gets
especially bad when you go as long between major releases as we have
between V4 and V5. 5.00503 is simply ancient!

So the reason Perl was removed was NOT the reason people want to remove
vi, BIND, gcc, etc. It was because people needed an up-to-date Perl and
having it in the base system made that nearly impossible. 
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman_at_es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634