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Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

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Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#51
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.

One reason to try it might be that pkgsrc mostly solves the problems Nix solves with conflicts in a much simpler way, by allowing multiple co-existing branches installed to different prefixes.

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#52
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.

I am the pkgin maintainer, and would be interested to hear about any issues you have building pkgin. It should build on any of the 23 platforms that pkgsrc supports, including Linux.

I even offer daily binary package builds for CentOS here: https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/install-on-linux/

Feel free to open up an issue at https://github.com/NetBSDfr/pkgin/issues and we can take a look.

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#53
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've been thinking of delegating mandatory crapware like zoom to my mobile phone. Needing to run stuff like that a few times a year is probably not worth preventing me from using an OS.

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Care to be more specific than "underlying stuff". The code and design of xbps looks nothing like the code or design of pacman or apk.

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#55
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

+1 for pacman. Homebrew's biggest issue is that it isn't a package manager for MacOS. You can interpret that however you want, but it's versatility is extremely limited compared to "full-fat" package managers like apt and pacman. At the end of the day, all of the MacOS package managers fit together to perform separate stop-gap solutions, where none of them really fell that great to use in the first place. Hell, pacma…

Pacman and friends used to work on macOS (source: I compiled and used them) and maybe they still do, but when it moved to bash 4 while apple is shunning newer versions, it became too much work to build all of the prerequisites.

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#57
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.

Unprivileged works now?

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#58

From pkgsrc homepage: > You can checkout pkgsrc HEAD with CVS: ...really? Not even Subversion, but CVS?

The repository of record is CVS, but you can - like many of us do - use either the hg export (https://anonhg.netbsd.org/pkgsrc) or GitHub (https://github.com/netbsd/pkgsrc) instead.

At some point we will transition the repository of record to something else, but it's being done carefully. We want to do it right, and there aren't many volunteers willing help with the work.

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#59
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…

How is macports out of date?

Re: Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

#60
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Care to be more specific than "underlying stuff". The code and design of xbps looks nothing like the code or design of pacman or apk.

Actual package recipes. BSD-style packaging systems are written in BSD make using a mk/ framework rather than Arch-style shell scripts. If a package already exists for FreeBSD Ports I would check that first because it's much more similar to what I'm used to.

Fundamentally pkgsrc is built on very low level tools, awk, shell, make, cwrappers, and pkg_install, although you can manage it with high-level ones (obviously pkgin is there, but there's also a lot of other third-party tooling).

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