Live data from Hacker News

Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

rubenerd.com

41–50 of 80 posts

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#41
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always interested to try different things, but I don't understand why people seem to dislike Homebrew so much. I've been a mostly-happy user on both Mac and Linux for years.

I dislike it because it’s really slow to do everything. Even printing help text is slow. Contrast with pacman on Arch, which is incredibly fast at nearly every operation. Unfortunately I’ve found all the package managers for macOS to be lacking. brew is slow, but has packages for most things and generally up to date. fink packages seem a bit out dated last I checked. At least the ones I cared about. MacPorts is also…

Nix is probably the slowest and is missing many packages. It's Kool-Aid for the cool kids. MacPorts was good until everyone started using Homebrew. Homebrew has some weird quirks that drive me crazy, but it mostly works and is up to date. I tried pkgsrc and liked it, but a few common packages were weirdly named and it didn't have some Mac specific stuff.

Some new package manager that's a mix of pkgsrc, brew, and MacPorts would be awesome. Especially if portable and could somehow also replace nvm, rbenv, pythonenv, and things of that nature.

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#42
post #7
post #2

Very interesting, I didn't know pkgsrc could be used on Linux, I'll check it out. In general the only things keeping me from BSD are non free apps like Zoom so the next best thing is to BSDify my systems.

I'd try nixpkgs before trying pkgsrc if for some reason I wasn't satisfied with ones that come with the distro. Not sure why BSDfying packages is desirable by itself.

Nothing against nixpkgs, but if the user is curious about how things are done in BSD perhaps he should try xbps before nixpkgs. It was written by a former NetBSD committer who wrote some useful programs for NetBSD's userland. I am biased perhaps but I believe it is faster than any other Linux package manager. Always looking for something faster so I am welcome to being proven wrong on that.

https://github.com/void-linux/xbps

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#43
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always interested to try different things, but I don't understand why people seem to dislike Homebrew so much. I've been a mostly-happy user on both Mac and Linux for years.

In addition to the valid criticisms in sibling comments: I don’t like that it changes the rules on file ownership in /opt and /usr/local. And it’s petty but I really don’t appreciate the beer brewing metaphor. It doesn’t fit and it feels forced. Giving the project a searchable name is fine but cutesy names are irritating when I have real work to do. Just name the tool and especially commands for what they do. I say t…

Yes, the beer brewing stuff, formulae, taps, kegs, casks, and bottles stuff is annoying. I have no idea what "keg only" is supposed to mean or why I see that phrase sometimes.

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#45
post #2

Very interesting, I didn't know pkgsrc could be used on Linux, I'll check it out. In general the only things keeping me from BSD are non free apps like Zoom so the next best thing is to BSDify my systems.

pkgsrc does work on Linux, but pkgin does not. I have no idea how to update my mirror and so forth using pkgsrc alone. Do not I need pkgin? I cannot do `pkg_add` at all.

I tried to make pkgin work, too, and I think it is possible to make it work with libbsd but I do not have the time. I wonder if anyone has done it.

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#46
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always interested to try different things, but I don't understand why people seem to dislike Homebrew so much. I've been a mostly-happy user on both Mac and Linux for years.

It's got a larger user and contributor base on macOS than competing package managers, and that works in its favor, especially in terms of package selection. I'm not a total hater; there are people I respect who prefer Homebrew over tools that I like better for reasons I understand. And package management is a peculiar interest of mine, so I care a lot about details and there isn't any package management system that t…

How are you handling the read only root folder with nix?

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#47
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd try nixpkgs before trying pkgsrc if for some reason I wasn't satisfied with ones that come with the distro. Not sure why BSDfying packages is desirable by itself.

Nothing against nixpkgs, but if the user is curious about how things are done in BSD perhaps he should try xbps before nixpkgs. It was written by a former NetBSD committer who wrote some useful programs for NetBSD's userland. I am biased perhaps but I believe it is faster than any other Linux package manager. Always looking for something faster so I am welcome to being proven wrong on that. https://github.com/void-li…

As a pkgsrc committer, xbps is nothing like pkgsrc. The underlying stuff is much more similar to something like Arch or Alpine Linux than anything that exists in the BSD world, and it's much less configurable than pkgsrc.

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#48
post #8

Other package management systems do one or two of the following things, but I haven't found any that can do all three at once, other than pkgsrc: 1) have good availability of pre-built binary packages for most platforms 2) facilitate building of packages directly from source, whether on non-mainstream platforms / architectures, and / or with or for the purpose of non-default package options 3) unprivileged builds / i…

nix does all three of these, I think.

It is nowhere near as cross-platform as pkgsrc - it only really supports macOS and Linux.

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#49
post #36

I used it with Netbsd 1 and it was the first thing to install in Solaris. Other question: how does one handle detection whether upgrades exist? Something like renovatebot but using pkgsrc. Or what is the best way in 2021 to trigger fresh builds against the latest packages?

pkg_rolling-replace -u
Post reply on HN