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.
Firefox 3.5, which is in pkgsrc-wip, is working on DragonFly. There’s some HTML% audio/video problems that can be attributed to the somewhat stale OSS code in Firefox; if you can contribute a fix, please do.
I’m copying pkgsrc packages to avalon.dragonflybsd.org that were built on a 2.3.1 DragonFly system; if you’re running a 2.3.1 or more recent DragonFly setup, pkg_radd should pull right from this, once the 8G of files finish copying over.
I recently did a bulk build of pkgsrc on two similar machines; the only significant difference being extra CPU work being done on one system, and Hammer snapshots on the other. However, they’re diverging in speed over time, which is interesting but not yet conclusive. Read my post about it for more details.
A good benchmarking project would be testing Hammer with snapshots on and with snapshots off.
Hasso Tepper posted his notes on the pkgsrc-users@ mailing list about the different video modes for the Intel video driver. Version 2.7 works, but only if you use certain options.
The pkgsrc freeze is on. We should have release 2009Q2 in 2 weeks…
The freeze for pkgsrc’s 2009Q2 release starts this Sunday, the 14th. The 2009Q2 release should follow two weeks afterwards, which will be very close to the time of the next planned DragonFly release. (2.4, in case you weren’t counting.)
I’ve just finished a new build of the 2009Q1 packages for DragonFly 2.2, and it’s available on http://avalon.dragonflybsd.org/packages – setting BINPKG_SITES or using pkg_chk can get you these latest versions.
I plan to have a 2009Q2 package set for DragonFly 2.4 as soon as possible after release.
The pkg_radd(1) and pkg_search(1) utilities defaulted to pkgbox.dragonflybsd.org. They’ve been switched (by me) to point at avalon.dragonflybsd.org, which has much more bandwidth.
Subversion isn’t being used for DragonFly, but it is available via pkgsrc. If you’re one of the people using it, the pkgsrc version has been updated to 1.6.2 which may have some upgrading issues.
Hasso Tepper has a “BIG FAT WARNING” about two new issues: threaded programs are broken on bleeding-edge DragonFly because of a possible GCC bug that was only recently exposed, and Xorg in pkgsrc has issues with the Intel driver.
Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert already has one change in that may fix the issue with threaded programs, and is working on the Intel driver issue.
Update: more threading changes.
Hasso Tepper has some xorg updates to fix problems he’s seen with the intel video driver. The versions of these packages in pkgsrc are old enough that the changes can’t be committed ‘upstream’ to xorg, so he’s attacking the problem from the opposite direction and upgrading the software.
He reported significant EXA performance improvements, so it’s definitely worthwhile. It’s tested on DragonFly but will probably benefit other pkgsrc-using platforms too.
… And Antonio Huete Jimenez has described the few steps required to install it.
pkg_dry, the binary package management tool I keep nattering on about, has had its name changed to ‘pkgin‘. I have no idea how to pronounce it.
If you’ve already tried pkg_dry, this will require rebuilding the databases because of the name change.
Antonio Huete Jimenez has updated his pkg_dry installation script. You won’t need it much longer; it should show up in pkgsrc soon.
Antonio Huete Jimenez wrote up his experiences using pkg_dry on DragonFly, which were mostly successful.
He followed up with a script that takes care of the initial setup for pkg_dry, and noted that following pkg_dry in CVS is the best idea at this point, as it’s going through rapid development.
It should be possible to point pkg_dry at pkgbox.dragonflybsd.org or one of the mirrors, and perform binary-only remote installs and upgrades of pkgsrc packages.
Johannes Hofmann has an initial version of the kqemu kernel module installable as a pkgsrc package, so that it can be managed the same as with other third-party software. I don’t know if this will actually make it into pkgsrc, but it would be nice if it did.
Hasso Tepper, who has been working very hard on pkgsrc on DragonFly, has a few strange pkgsrc issues he’d like help on. Anyone have ideas? (Follow the thread to see what’s been done so far.)
Make Hasso Tepper’s life a bit easier and take heed of this list: Maintaining stuff in pkgsrc.
Edit: Meant to publish this a bit ago; missed it. Sorry!
Spotted by trevorjk in EFNet #dragonflybsd: Mono from pkgsrc now compiles on DragonFly.