Seen on the pkgsrc-users@ mailing list: a way to dramatically speed up FireFox.
Joerg Sonnenberger posted on the tech-pkg@netbsd.org mailing list his Summer of Code plans for pkgsrc work. The bulk-building tasks are similar to what he’s started with his bulk builds of pkgsrc for DragonFly.
April 8th is a month away, and it’s the deadline if you want to register for pkgsrcCon 2007, happening in Barcelona, Spain from April 27th to the 29th. The deadline for presentations is April 1st. (no fooling!)
Joerg Sonnenberger’s looking for ideas on what people want to see at pkgsrcCon.
DragonFly picks up a passing mention in this blog post of someone fighting with pkgsrc on Linux. DragonFly 1.8 itself get tried by this developer, but rejected because KDM won’t work.
Jonathan Weeks noticed this thread about DragonFly’s 1.8 release on OSNews, with much ensuing discussion. (it’s somewhat partisan, so don’t put too much work into reading it.)
pkgsrcCon number 4 will be held this April. If you’d like to present a pkgsrc-related paper there, the call for presentations is out.
If you want to read a very dense chunk of text, the “December 2006 Pkgsrc Changes Summary” is out.
xfce 4.4 is out; it’s in pkgsrc-wip now if you want to try it early; otherwise, it should be officially in pkgsrc soon.
Petr Janda wants someone to create a pkgsrc package for mod_cfg_ldap. Any takers?
Pkgsrc version 2006Q4, a ‘known stable’ release, has been announced. It’s available through cvs, and Joerg’s binary archive should be updated soon to match the new packages.
A resurrected experiment: this local page shows the creation date of each binary pkgsrc package in Joerg’s archive, sorted in reverse chronological order. It’s updated daily. It’s an easy, cheesy way to tell when new packages have been uploaded. (The link for this page is also in the Links list on this page.)
Joerg Sonnenberger announced a virtual pkgsrc hackathon, aimed at closing as many PRs as possible. It’s at the same time as 23c3 – the end of this month. (Don’t forget the DragonFly meetup, there!)
Alistair Crooks, on the pkgsrc-users@netbsd.org mailing list, announced that pkgsrc is being ‘frozen’ for the 2006Q4 branch. That means no major changes for the next 2 weeks, and then a new release of pkgsrc comes out, just in time for the end of the year.
An oft-asked question about pkgsrc is, “How do I upgrade?”. There’s a number of ways to do it, with varying levels of danger and speed. This question has been asked enough times on the pkgsrc-users@ mailing list that Jeremy C. Reed set up a wiki page describing the various tools. Bookmark it, cause someday you’ll want it.
Joerg Sonnenberger’s archive of DragonFly binaries for pkgsrc has been updated. Notably, this includes a DragonFly build of FireFox 2. It’s in the ‘/vulnerable‘ directory, since there’s (eternally) some security issue that qualifies it. ‘pkg_add ftp://path/to/that/firefox2/package‘ will get it installed for you.
Seen on pkgsrc-users@: A new tool for pkgsrc upgrades, called pkg_rolling-replace. It’s in pkgtools. It builds replacements for programs in order of dependency, without removing everything first. Strangely, it was funded by DARPA.
Also, the latest version of Apache 2.2 has been brought into pkgsrc. I link to the message because it also describes how to set the 2.2 version as the default for every other package that requires Apache.
Recently on the pkgsrc tech-pkg list, Roland Illig posted the developer-oriented “How to get help with pkgsrc / pkgsrc documentation“, and Alistair Crooks posted “Changes to the Packages Collection in October 2006“.
As Joerg Sonnenberger recently described, his ‘stable‘ group of binary pkgsrc packages comes from the regular pkgsrc quarterly releases, and the ‘current‘ batch comes from whatever is in pkgsrc at the time of the build. Stick with ‘stable’ for the most dependable results.
Updating pkgsrc is usually done through cvs, though it is apparently also now possible using Mercurial. (Thanks HubertF)
The latest quarterly release of pkgsrc is out, and here’s the announcement. Start your somewhat difficult upgrade process now!