Matthew Dillon posted the results of a full bulk build of pkgsrc on a 64-bit DragonFly system; the success rate was relatively high for a new platform and pkgsrc-current. The pkg_radd(1) and pkg_search(1) utilities will need some changes.
If you want to use kerberos for logins, you need pam_krb5.so. However, that’s not built automatically since kerberos was removed from the base system in DragonFly. The solution is to install security/heimdal from pkgsrc and follow corecode’s brief instructions.
Want to make Hasso Tepper’s day? He’s posted 4 separate bugs for DragonFly that revolve around pkgsrc packages: sysutils/hal, sysutils/libgtop, audio/pulseaudio, and HTML5 video in FireFox. All of these (except the last) are issues that have been present for a while, and fixing any of them will help a number of other pkgsrc packages work correctly on DragonFly. If the work appeals to you, please dig in.
Qemu, used for testing 64-bit DragonFly, has been updated to version 10.6 in pkgsrc. BSD user emulation compiles, but doesn’t run, as Hasso Tepper has found out. He’d appreciate it if someone could investigate… (his hands are full with the rest of pkgsrc.)
Hasso Tepper has written up a mini-FAQ for pkgsrc and DragonFly. Among other points, he asks that people try to politely submit DragonFly-specific changes upstream, past pkgsrc, to the software creators themselves. This creates the least amount of work for pkgsrc developers and DragonFly users.
The libtiff package has been found to write out incorrect TIFF files in version 3.9.0. If that’s what is installed on your system, please update now.
Siju George asked about updating pkgsrc packages, both on DragonFly mailing lists and on pkgsrc-users@. The ensuing discussion can be boiled down to several alternatives: pkg_chk in a separate chroot, pkg_rolling-replace, or pkgin, pointed at avalon.dragonflybsd.org. I’ve used pkg_rolling-replace several times with good results, and it may be possible to convince it to use binary packages, too.
For those of you running DragonFly 2.3.1 or later, I’ve updated the pkgsrc-2009Q2 packages on avalon.dragonflybsd.org to the latest versions on that branch. If you’re curious to see which were updated, I have a list after the cut:
I’ve got a number of little items, so more roundup:
- How much disruption happened in DragonFly after introducing a dynamic device system? Surprisingly, very little, as most of pkgsrc still builds. Thanks are due to Hasso Tepper for the corrective work.
- _why makes some very perceptive comments.
- Jordan Gordeev’s been working on the very difficult AMD64 port as part of his Summer of Code work. He says thanks for the help, and others reply in kind. Speaking of which, it’s possible to boot 64-bit DragonFly now, though it’s not production-ready.
I’ve always had trouble updating certain pkgsrc packages that happen to also form the basic tools for pkgsrc – pkg_install, bootstrap, etc. Hasso Tepper has very kindly written up a note describing how to update these packages with newer versions of pkgsrc.
audio/cdparanoia, in pkgsrc, had a major update and now doesn’t work on DragonFly. Hasso Tepper could use a hand fixing it – any takers?
This isn’t breaking news, but it provides definition for pkgsrc: there’s ‘stable’ branches of pkgsrc that aren’t called ‘stable’; they’re tagged as quarterly releases. You may have already inferred this from my postings. Alan Barrett went into detail on the pkgsrc-users@netbsd.org mailing list.
If you’re on DragonFly 2.3.1 or 2.3.2: I’ve uploaded a full pkgsrc build to avalon.dragonflybsd.org based on pkgsrc-2009Q2. It’s possible to use pkg_radd to automatically download and install packages for those systems. (and pkg_search will search the remote repository for you.)
If you’re on DragonFly 2.2.x, I’ve modified the pkg_radd target for that release so that when pkg_radd makes a request, it is redirected to the appropriate place on avalon.dragonflybsd.org instead of attempting (and potentially failing) to find a matching mirror.
I said close to the same thing as the above text on users@; the short form of all this is that pkg_radd should generally work for everyone. Tell me if that’s not your experience.
I published a retention policy for pkgsrc packages. It works out to “current release and last release” for what will be kept as pkgsrc binaries that you can add with pkg_radd. If you need longer-term support, speak up, but I don’t think this will be a problem for anyone.
Postgres version 8.1 is going to be removed from pkgsrc soon, since Postgres 8.4 is now available (in general, and in pkgsrc). Speak up on the pkgsrc mailing lists if this is a significant problem for you.
The latest quarterly release of pkgsrc, 2009Q2, is out. The release announcement has details on what’s new.
avalon.dragonflybsd.org has a fresh set of pkgsrc-current binary packages for 2.2.1 located at http://avalon.dragonflybsd.org/packages/DragonFly-2.2/pkgsrc-current/. I’ll start a pkgsrc-2009Q2 build momentarily – the pkgsrc-2009Q2 build will become ‘stable’.
Threading libraries libc_r and libthread_xu have been synchronized by Hasso Tepper; this shouldn’t cause noticeable issues. The potential issues he mentions for pkgsrc appear fixed, as I haven’t had any significant trouble (from that, at least) during bulk builds.
The binary pkgsrc packages I had on avalon.dragonflybsd.org for 2.3.1 are removed; I had mixed an old and new libc on the build system. (Sorry!) I’ll have new ones based on pkgsrc’s 2009Q2 release very soon.
This blog post talks about the identified reasons Ubuntu has been so successful in growth over the past few years. The post uses it as a comparison to Perl, but it holds some lessons for DragonFly. Some items we have now – a Live CD, simple install, regular release schedule – and they’ve been very useful.
On the other hand, the available applications is something that can improve – as nice as it it to build from source, immediate installation of binaries is best. Heck, some companies base their business around it. Pkgsrc is getting closer to creating an “app store” for DragonFly. We’ve got a civil community, but I’d like to figure out ways to make it even more accessible.
(Nobody mentions this when talking about Ubuntu’s success, but having a large, privately-funded company backing your open source project also helps.)
While on the subject, I would love to have a job like Jono Bacon’s. He works with all the issues that I think about.