Re: pkgng 1.0 release schedule, and HEAD switch to pkgng by default schedule

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On 8/22/2012 5:27 AM, Ivan Voras wrote:
> On 21/08/2012 22:15, Doug Barton wrote:
> 
>> And in this case, it doesn't matter how awesome the new tools
>> are, they are a MAJOR paradigm shift for how users interact with
>> ports, and we are
> 
> Unless I've missed something,

Yes, you've missed quite a lot actually. You really need to follow the
discussion on ports_at_ if you want to stay up to speed.

> pkgng is actually *zero* paradigm shift for users familiar with
> *ports*, and here's why: people using ports can and will continue
> to use ports the way they are used to. AFAIK, the infrastructure
> which registers port installation is already there and there are
> also patches for portupgrade and portmaster which make them 
> interact nicely with the new package database.

For users who only have very limited interaction with the ports tree
this is probably true. But what we're seeing is that a lot of users
(especially those with larger installations, and re-packagers like
PC-BSD) have more than simple/limited ports interaction.

For those users the change is going to take time, sometimes
significant time to adjust to.

> The only important aspect of this is that the actual package
> database format changed (IMO, immensely for the better) and there
> are several other port management utilities which may need to be
> changed. People who got used to manually altering the old
> text-based package database will learn either not to do it anymore,
> since whole classes of errors have now become impossible to have,
> or learn how to do it with the new format.
> 
> Can you explain what you mean as the "paradigm shift" for ports
> users here?

You just described it. And I certainly hope that the change is indeed
for the better, however that has yet to be demonstrated on a large
scale. I think shifting the default for 10 is going to give us more
data on this point, which is a good thing. But making it mandatory in
10 is premature.

> OTOH, people using *binary packages* (the very few and miserable
> users that they are since the old binary package infrastructure has
> sucked for the last decade or so), will get their world turned
> upside down, but for the better, and hopefully grow in numbers.

No argument from me on the sucking, but the number of users using the
existing packages is not "few." There are more consumers of the
FreeBSD-distributed packages than you probably realize. But more
importantly there are a LOT of enterprise users who roll their own
package infrastructure.

I have been trying to get across to some of our src-centric Illuminati
for years just how valuable/important the ports are to the FreeBSD
Operating _System_. For better or worse I think that this change is
going to bear out the truth of what I (and others of course) have been
saying.

Doug

- -- 

    I am only one, but I am one.  I cannot do everything, but I can do
    something.  And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what
    I can do.
			-- Edward Everett Hale, (1822 - 1909)
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