[Gllug] Ports

[Bruce Richardson]

On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 11:53:02AM +0000, Simon Stewart wrote:
> Has anyone out there had a play with the Linux port of the ports
> collection? There's a link to it from 
> 
> http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/ports/pseudo/
> 
> I've always meant to try using the BSDs more, and part of the reason
> for that is that I hear good things about ports....[0] Of course, the
> next great question: when will there be a ports based Linux distro?

The point about about the ports collection for FreeBSD (and OpenBSD
now) is that it is *the* packaging tool - the *only* packaging tool.
This means that there's only one set of hurdles to jump through to to
port something to FreeBSD - which is a reflection of the fact that there
only is one FreeBSD "distribution" and not of the technical merits of
the ports collection.

If you use FreeBSD and you know something has been ported to FreeBSD all
you need to know is what are its dependencies.  That simple.

Given that Linux *is* split into differing distributions with different
basic configurations, there will always at any one moment be packages
that have not been packaged for your distribution of choice, even if it
*is* based on a Linux version of FreeBSD ports.  So it just becomes Yet
Another Package Manager - or it would if YAPM hadn't already been used
for Yet Another Ping Manager (did we need one?).

> [0] And networking. IPFilter is a lovely little thing.

Just don't let Theo de Raadt hear you saying that.

-- 
Bruce

The ice-caps are melting, tra-la-la-la.  All the world is drowning,
tra-la-la-la-la.  -- Tiny Tim.
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