Re: Pkg-based base system.

On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 06:25:28PM +0100, Miguel Mendez wrote:
>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?

As others have noted, sendmail and bind have always been part of BSD.
Perl was developed independently and integrated into FreeBSD because it
was useful.

Perl was removed from the base system because:
1) Perl is maintained independently of FreeBSD and has been undergoing
   very rapid evolution.
2) The perl build system is essentially incompatible with FreeBSD's
   "buildworld".  The perl build system assumes that perl is being built
   on exactly the same system as it will be run whereas buildworld is
   essentially a cross-build system.  For a buildworld to be able to
   upgrade a system it cannot allow anything to assume that the runtime
   environment is the same as the build environment.

Integrating perl into the FreeBSD build environment requires major
surgery on the perl build system.  Upgrading the base system to a new
version of perl requires a major investment of effort - which
inherently discourages anyone from upgrading the base perl.  At the
same time, users want/need the features from newer perl versions -
which meant they had to install perl from ports anyway.  Removing
perl from the base system was the most logical outcome.

Peter