Re: [CFT] packaging the base system with pkg(8)

On 04/19/16 10:55, Roger Marquis wrote:
>> Please, consider ops and admins, who must support old installations,
>> often made by other, not-reachable, people, and stuff like this,
>
> Ops and admins such as myself are exactly the ones who will benefit most
> from base packages.  Being able run to: 1) 'pkg audit' and see that base
> ssl has a vulnerability, 2) 'pkg install -f' to update 3) only those
> specific parts of base that need to be updated is far simpler (KIS) and
> faster than what we go through now.  More than a few formerly bsd shops
> have migrated to linux simply to avoid regular iterations of cd
> /usr/src; svn up; make cleanworld; make buildworld installworld ...
>
> The use cases for granular base packages are more numerous than even
> these obvious ones.  The downside OTOH, seems to consist of not much
> more than the size of the package list.  If I missed other issues please
> do clarify.  Will base packages be improved, sure, but they're already
> more useful and bugfree than pkgng when it was mandated.
>
> In any case, if I'm not mistaken base packages are entirely optional.
>
> Roger Marquis
>

Thanks, Roger. That seems perfectly reasonable. I'm not sure that goal 
is really met by having 800 packages, though, or at least I see no 
particular gain relative to a handful (where things like OpenSSL or 
sendmail would be discrete things). (Almost) every single individual 
library in the base system is right now its own single-file package, 
which is what I am objecting to. The upside of that seems pretty dubious 
and the downside is that it is much easier to accidentally put the 
system into an inconsistent state. Is there a reason you want to have 
such very fine discretization?
-Nathan