cvsup vs. rsync

cvsup is an excellent program, allowing retrievals of file revisions from a cvsup server.  It’s been traditionally used in FreeBSD and DragonFly to get updates to the system source…  However, cvsup requires a working version of Modula-3 to build, and the C-based replacement, csup, can’t run as a server.  Rsync is a common alternative that also offers good performance.

I did a comparison of the two, repeatedly running partial and full downloads from a DragonFly mirror that supplied the same data via both protocols.  I posted the results, and dragonflybsd.org is now offering files via rsync.

How to use modular xorg

pkgsrc now has the new modular version of xorg.  There isn’t yet a single meta-package to pull it all in as there was for monolithic xorg, but you can find the packages pretty easily by just looking at what Joerg Sonnenberger is working on.  If you want to build packages using this latest version, set ‘X11_VERSION=modular’ in your mk.conf file.  (Thanks to Joerg for cluing me in to this.)

Someone want to get DRI/DRM working?  NetBSD just started getting it together, and it would be handy to take advantage of some of the xorg features with it.