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Mark Valentine
*nix forums addict
Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 62
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 Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 1:06 am Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
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| Quote: | From: louie@TransSys.COM ("Louis A. Mamakos")
Date: Sun 14 Jul, 2002
Subject: Re: Package system flaws?
I think of two classes of users of the FreeBSD system. They are:
A) Those that install releases from a CDROM from time-to-time.
2) Those that follow FreeBSD development on an on-going basis (e.g.,
bleeding edge -CURRENT or production -STABLE users).
The "A" class of users don't need a package management system to
maintain their systems as part of the FreeBSD base system.
|
How then do they install the package management system package? ;-)
| Quote: | E.g., they
use tools like sysinstall which isn't even built by "make buildworld",
but is available on the distribution CDROM they booted.
|
sysinstall and pkg_add are part of the base system, regardless of what
a source build does (source builds being irrelevant to this class of users).
[And sysinstall is part of buildworld in 5.0 anyway.]
The "A" class still needs tools which will enable them to install additional
packages, and to update components of the base system (e.g. for security
fixes), ideally without ever needing any part of the source tree.
| Quote: | What's it
mean to be part of the "base system" when everything turns into
optional components?
|
The "base system" is a pre-defined set of packages approximately equivalent
to what today comprises the base system (minus a few components which would
be optional now if the ports system were up to it).
This subset is "standard FreeBSD", and third party developers can reasonably
assume that all of its components are installed - you can install less if you
don't care about that.
Cheers,
Mark.
--
Mark Valentine, Thuvia Labs <mark@thuvia.co.uk> <http://www.thuvia.co.uk>
"Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich." Mark Valentine uses
"We're kind of stupid that way." *munch* *munch* and endorses FreeBSD
-- <http://www.calvinandhobbes.com> <http://www.freebsd.org>
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Terry Lambert
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 19 Mar 2002
Posts: 434
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 4:13 am Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
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Mark Valentine wrote:
| Quote: | Rather than trusting people with this, I would like to see the
ability to learn institutionalized in the project and the tools,
so that when individuals responsible leave, either voluntarily,
or by getting hit by a bus, that the learning is not lost.
I'd like to hear your ideas on how to make _that_ happen! 
|
A system is always greater than the sum of its parts.
I know this seems incredibly cliche, but it's nonetheless
true; that's how things get to be cliches in the first place.
The way you get systems with self-sustaining properties that
are desirable is by designing the system so that the properties
you think are desirable are themselves emergent from the set of
simple rules that govern the system.
So in the limit, you pick the rules that, when combined, result
in the systemic behaviour you desire. Note that the rules don't
directly dictate this behaviour: the behaviour is an emergent
property. So it comes down to being able to pick "the right
rules".
FreeBSD has done pretty well; but it could do better.
One of the emergent properties of the current "rules of FreeBSD",
which include a set of configuration management tools which are
not capable of being applied to a rigidly defined base system, is
that applications for an OS, which are not a good fit to that base
system, are seperately defined outside of it. The most friendly
of these is my recent "pet example" PicoBSD.
But the rule here is arbitrary: the base system is rigidly defined
because it is difficult to change, and it's difficult to change
for a lack of tools that permit easy redefinition. It's *not*
difficult to change because there's a particular systemic *need*
for it to be difficult to change.
You *might* argue that tools which permit an easy redefinition
will make it easier for the group definition of "the base system"
to lose power, and erode. Ignoring the merit of the delegation
of power towards that particular ends... by that rationale, the
lack of such tools should have prevented the existance of PicoBSD
in the first place. The argument is flawed: self organizing
systems *will* route around the damage, no matter what/ You
might as well embrace them: at least it permits you to keep
control over the context in which they emerge.
To put it another way, if you're an Oxygen breather, it's in your
best interests to embrace other Oxygen breathers, particularly if
the altternative is a Chlorine-breater.  .
-- Terry
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Mark Valentine
*nix forums addict
Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 62
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 4:28 am Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
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| Quote: | From: tlambert2@mindspring.com (Terry Lambert)
Date: Mon 15 Jul, 2002
Subject: Re: Package system flaws?
"Louis A. Mamakos" wrote:
I think of two classes of users of the FreeBSD system. They are:
A) Those that install releases from a CDROM from time-to-time.
2) Those that follow FreeBSD development on an on-going basis (e.g.,
bleeding edge -CURRENT or production -STABLE users).
The "A" class of users don't need a package management system to
maintain their systems as part of the FreeBSD base system. E.g., they
use tools like sysinstall which isn't even built by "make buildworld",
but is available on the distribution CDROM they booted.
The "2" class of users use tools like cvsup which isn't part of the
base system to keep their source code/repositories up to date. They
manage to do this by using a tool in the ports/packages system. Many
of them also choose to use tools like portupgrade, also in ports/packages.
I respectfully disagree (and not just with your numbering not
being from a single canonical ordinal set ;^)). I think the
majority of FreeBSD users fall into an excluded middle:
iii) Those that follow -stable or -security, and *ignore* FreeBSD
developement on an ongoing basis.
The "iii" class of users, I would argue, represents the *vast*
majority of FreeBSD users, and I'm not just talking "by volume"
because of Yahoo and the thousands of InterJet users, I'm talking
*by user*.
|
Yes, users just want to get their job done with the minimum of effort.
They need Internet-exposed systems to keep up to date with security fixes,
but they typically don't have the resources to "make world" to do it.
| Quote: | FreeBSD tries very hard to avoid getting into the desktop domain
and competing there, for fear that it would lose.
|
I don't think there's anything specific to desktops in the problems we're
discussing. I'd like to be able to reduce the effort for my clients to
maintain their news/mail/web servers and Internet gateways. These are
key areas where FreeBSD is a relatively easy pitch, but unlike desktops,
these systems exist in numbers too small to warrant a cloning or similar
distributed maintenance setup.
For desktops, I'm not sure. I've traditionally pitched SPARC systems
running my second favourite operating system there (application availability,
platform stability, etc.), and of course the binary patches are there.
However, it's going to increasingly be the case (partly thanks to Sun
abandoning mid-range workstations years ago, but also due to changing
climate) where I'm going to want to pitch FreeBSD as a fallback, where
the customer probably already has Linux vaguely in mind. I have the
improved cohesiveness and reliability of FreeBSD on my side, and I
have the ability to set up an environment where the customer can update
these systems from a central build, but the admins I see in my market
are just scared of operating system source code. So binary updates are
probably pretty important there too.
| Quote: | Rather than trusting people with this, I would like to see the
ability to learn institutionalized in the project and the tools,
so that when individuals responsible leave, either voluntarily,
or by getting hit by a bus, that the learning is not lost.
|
I'd like to hear your ideas on how to make _that_ happen! :-)
Cheers,
Mark.
--
Mark Valentine, Thuvia Labs <mark@thuvia.co.uk> <http://www.thuvia.co.uk>
"Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich." Mark Valentine uses
"We're kind of stupid that way." *munch* *munch* and endorses FreeBSD
-- <http://www.calvinandhobbes.com> <http://www.freebsd.org>
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Mark Valentine
*nix forums addict
Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 62
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 12:15 pm Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
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| Quote: | From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com
Date: Sun 14 Jul, 2002
Subject: Re: Package system flaws?
Mark Valentine wrote:
Rather than trusting people with this, I would like to see the
ability to learn institutionalized in the project and the tools,
so that when individuals responsible leave, either voluntarily,
or by getting hit by a bus, that the learning is not lost.
I'd like to hear your ideas on how to make _that_ happen! :-)
[vague rant snipped]
|
I didn't see anything in there concrete enough to take action on...
We already know about the problem of modularising the base system,
and I'm not sure how reminding us of that helps to "institutionalize
the ability to learn".
Cheers,
Mark.
--
Mark Valentine, Thuvia Labs <mark@thuvia.co.uk> <http://www.thuvia.co.uk>
"Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich." Mark Valentine uses
"We're kind of stupid that way." *munch* *munch* and endorses FreeBSD
-- <http://www.calvinandhobbes.com> <http://www.freebsd.org>
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Alexey Dokuchaev
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 02 May 2002
Posts: 42
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 12:44 pm Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
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On Sun, Jul 14, 2002 at 09:42:42AM -0701, Jos Backus wrote:
| Quote: |
Part of me still thinks it's a pity that we don't have a decent scripting
language (such as Ruby) as part of the base OS. Windows has Visual BASIC for
|
We did have a very powerful one until recently -- Perl. I guess the
fact it was removed from the base is for a very good reason.
| Quote: | Applications - all due respect to the awk creators and maintainers, but surely
we can do better than awk/sh?
|
Oh please, can you show us something essential for base enough that
could not be implemented in a sh/sed/awk way? I somewhat doubt it.
'cmon, it's pretty clear that Perl or Ruby is more of an overhead than
of worth. Traditionally, UNIX lived for 30+ years without need for a
monster like Perl or Ruby, in the base, clearly showing us that
sh/awk/sed is a [very] decent scripting facility.
../danfe
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Jos Backus
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 10 Jul 2002
Posts: 15
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 2:29 pm Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
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On Sun, Jul 14, 2002 at 08:14:08PM +0200, Thomas Seck wrote:
| Quote: | I think it is good not to have everyones' favourite scripting language in
the base system.
|
I agree. Nowhere did I say we should include all of them (that's what the
ports system is for). I'm saying that the current set of tools in the base is
limiting. Unless of course you _define_ the base to consist only of these
tools. We should pick one that has a reasonable chance of being able to be
supported in the base and stick with it. Perl had build and packaging issues
which made it a nightmare to support, fine, so let's pick another one that
does a better job than awk/sh/etc. The problems were not with the fact that
having a powerful scripting language in the base OS is necessarily bad but
with its implementation in FreeBSD.
| Quote: | And VBA is not part of Windows(tm) by the way.
|
Depends on your definition of "Windows", so I'm not going to argue this one.
Suffice it to say that a well-supported scripting language is a Good Thing.
| Quote: | No one stops you from doing (cd /usr/ports/lang/ruby && make install).
|
Of course.
--
Jos Backus _/ _/_/_/ Santa Clara, CA
_/ _/ _/
_/ _/_/_/
_/ _/ _/ _/
jos@catnook.com _/_/ _/_/_/ require 'std/disclaimer'
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Jos Backus
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 10 Jul 2002
Posts: 15
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 2:38 pm Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
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On Sun, Jul 14, 2002 at 11:49:58PM +0200, Thomas Seck wrote:
| Quote: | Normally I would second that but IMHO portupgrade(1) is dangerous
in a way that it is a fine bandaid for the flaws in the current
implementation of the package system. There is no urge for the
developers to address these issues because "we have portupgrade". I do
not fight a religious war against portupgrade(1), I use it myself. But I
wish I would not have to. That is my point.
|
While I agree with you in theory, the base-supported tools make writing a
portupgrade-like tool non-trivial (that's the whole point of high-level
scripting languages) which is one reason why only portupgrade exists today.
You could turn this around, too: import Ruby+portupgrade into the base system,
write compatibility wrappers for the existing pkg_* tools and remove the old
pkg_* tools :-)
--
Jos Backus _/ _/_/_/ Santa Clara, CA
_/ _/ _/
_/ _/_/_/
_/ _/ _/ _/
jos@catnook.com _/_/ _/_/_/ require 'std/disclaimer'
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Thomas Seck
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 12 Jul 2002
Posts: 19
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 3:43 pm Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
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* Jos Backus (jos@catnook.com):
| Quote: | On Sun, Jul 14, 2002 at 08:14:08PM +0200, Thomas Seck wrote:
I think it is good not to have everyones' favourite scripting language in
the base system.
I agree. Nowhere did I say we should include all of them (that's what the
ports system is for). I'm saying that the current set of tools in the base is
limiting. Unless of course you _define_ the base to consist only of these
tools.
|
I do. The base system should contain only the minimum amount of tools
to keep the system running and "self contained", including basic tools
for maintenance of third party applications. Everything else should be
left to the user's choice.
| Quote: | We should pick one that has a reasonable chance of being able to be
supported in the base and stick with it. Perl had build and packaging issues
which made it a nightmare to support, fine, so let's pick another one that
does a better job than awk/sh/etc. The problems were not with the fact that
having a powerful scripting language in the base OS is necessarily bad but
with its implementation in FreeBSD.
|
Unless a special scripting language is absolutely necessary for the
system to function or to "rebuild" (bootstrap?) itself, it should stay
in "ports land". I do not think it is wise to invest developer resources
into maintenance and integration work the way it was done with Perl ever
again. Apart from the usual problem of the maintainer being hit by a
bus, kidnapped by aliens, losing interest, getting a life etc., you may
run into political issues, Ruby for instance is GPL'ed.
| Quote: | And VBA is not part of Windows(tm) by the way.
Depends on your definition of "Windows", so I'm not going to argue this one.
|
I apologise for being picky about it. Say VBS and I agree. VBA ships
with MS Office and can IIRC be licenced for integration into your own
apps.
| Quote: | Suffice it to say that a well-supported scripting language is a Good Thing.
|
It depends. See ILY and friends for the benefits of scripting
environments on Windows "Workstations". I agree in cmd.exe and
the whole Windows toolchest being a joke when it comes to system
administration.
--
Thomas Seck
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Thomas Seck
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 12 Jul 2002
Posts: 19
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 4:10 pm Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
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* Jos Backus (jos@catnook.com):
| Quote: | On Sun, Jul 14, 2002 at 11:49:58PM +0200, Thomas Seck wrote:
Normally I would second that but IMHO portupgrade(1) is dangerous
in a way that it is a fine bandaid for the flaws in the current
implementation of the package system. There is no urge for the
developers to address these issues because "we have portupgrade". I do
not fight a religious war against portupgrade(1), I use it myself. But I
wish I would not have to. That is my point.
While I agree with you in theory, the base-supported tools make writing a
portupgrade-like tool non-trivial (that's the whole point of high-level
scripting languages) which is one reason why only portupgrade exists today.
|
It is probably more difficult to do correctly, agreed. But this has to
be done only once and maybe put into a library (libh?).
| Quote: | You could turn this around, too: import Ruby+portupgrade into the base system,
write compatibility wrappers for the existing pkg_* tools and remove the old
pkg_* tools
|
Three problems with this:
- Yet Another Language to maintain, tying up developer resources
- I personally do not need Ruby (or $scripting_language_of_the_season)
- Licence issues, thus endless political discussions
--
Thomas Seck
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Jos Backus
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 10 Jul 2002
Posts: 15
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 4:29 pm Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
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On Mon, Jul 15, 2002 at 06:18:46PM +0100, Mark Valentine wrote:
| Quote: | I can do a heck of a lot with sh/expr/sed/join/etc (and awk when it gets
serious), and I try to stick to the POSIX.2 subset.
Beyond that there's a perfectly good C compiler.
|
The fact that it can be done using these tools doesn't mean that they are the
most appropriate choice. Of course many people (especially those who feel
scripting languages are silly toys only to be used for non-real-world
applications) will disagree with this stance. Anyway, I have said what I
wanted to say; I'm not going to argue this any further.
| Quote: | An individual OS can add whatever frills it wants to the "base" system, but
it doesn't mean much to me as a proponent of portable software until all the
platforms I support do likewise.
|
If portability is at all important, I think we should abandon discussing the
FreeBSD pkg_* tools (and portupgrade) and focus on what the OpenPackages
people are doing.
| Quote: | We should pick one that has a reasonable chance of being able to be
supported in the base and stick with it.
Well, if we can't handle Tcl in the base system, I doubt much else has a look
in...
|
FwIu, Tcl is a bad example because of their internally inconsistent
versioning; new versions are not backward-compatible enough, etc.
| Quote: | Perl had build and packaging issues
which made it a nightmare to support, fine, so let's pick another one that
does a better job than awk/sh/etc.
I'd like to hear you name one that would fit the bill, never mind find a
concensus...
|
First we need to decide if we even _want_ a more powerful scripting language
included. It sounds like the current consensus is a resounding NO. However,
applications like portupgrade are much easier written in a scripting language
than using the standard tools. Scripting languages, for all their faults, also
reach a larger audience of potential contributors than the standard tools do.
All imo, of course.
Cheers,
--
Jos Backus _/ _/_/_/ Santa Clara, CA
_/ _/ _/
_/ _/_/_/
_/ _/ _/ _/
jos@catnook.com _/_/ _/_/_/ require 'std/disclaimer'
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Jos Backus
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 10 Jul 2002
Posts: 15
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 5:16 pm Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
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On Mon, Jul 15, 2002 at 08:10:34PM +0200, Thomas Seck wrote:
| Quote: | It is probably more difficult to do correctly, agreed. But this has to
be done only once and maybe put into a library (libh?).
|
Well, let's wait for libh then, which will render this whole discussion moot.
| Quote: | - Yet Another Language to maintain, tying up developer resources
|
Granted, it would mean more work initially, but afterwards we would have a
better prototyping tool in the base OS (one of the things scripting languages
are often used for) and the whole portupgrade discussion would be over, too.
Assuming bmake'ing Ruby is easy (Perl certainly wasn't, which was one of the
reasons it was dropped) it would be a good candidate in my view. But I realize
full well that I am perhaps the only person that feels this way.
| Quote: | - I personally do not need Ruby (or $scripting_language_of_the_season)
|
I personally have not used awk in a while, and am trying to get away from Perl
for all the bad habits it has taught me :)
| Quote: | - Licence issues, thus endless political discussions
|
Fwiw, Matz has said that Rite (Ruby 2.0) will have a BSD license. Currently
regex.c is GPL'ed but a new regex engine (named Oniguruma) is in the works.
See
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/34496
--
Jos Backus _/ _/_/_/ Santa Clara, CA
_/ _/ _/
_/ _/_/_/
_/ _/ _/ _/
jos@catnook.com _/_/ _/_/_/ require 'std/disclaimer'
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Mark Valentine
*nix forums addict
Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 62
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 5:18 pm Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
|
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| Quote: | From: jos@catnook.com (Jos Backus)
Date: Mon 15 Jul, 2002
Subject: Re: Package system flaws?
On Sun, Jul 14, 2002 at 08:14:08PM +0200, Thomas Seck wrote:
I think it is good not to have everyones' favourite scripting language in
the base system.
I agree. Nowhere did I say we should include all of them (that's what the
ports system is for). I'm saying that the current set of tools in the base is
limiting.
|
I can do a heck of a lot with sh/expr/sed/join/etc (and awk when it gets
serious), and I try to stick to the POSIX.2 subset.
Beyond that there's a perfectly good C compiler.
If I have more specialised needs, I'll be installing third party packages
in any case, and I'll pick the tools that work for me.
| Quote: | Unless of course you _define_ the base to consist only of these tools.
|
An individual OS can add whatever frills it wants to the "base" system, but
it doesn't mean much to me as a proponent of portable software until all the
platforms I support do likewise.
| Quote: | We should pick one that has a reasonable chance of being able to be
supported in the base and stick with it.
|
Well, if we can't handle Tcl in the base system, I doubt much else has a look
in...
| Quote: | Perl had build and packaging issues
which made it a nightmare to support, fine, so let's pick another one that
does a better job than awk/sh/etc.
|
I'd like to hear you name one that would fit the bill, never mind find a
concensus...
Cheers,
Mark.
--
Mark Valentine, Thuvia Labs <mark@thuvia.co.uk> <http://www.thuvia.co.uk>
"Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich." Mark Valentine uses
"We're kind of stupid that way." *munch* *munch* and endorses FreeBSD
-- <http://www.calvinandhobbes.com> <http://www.freebsd.org>
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Mark Valentine
*nix forums addict
Joined: 13 Jun 2002
Posts: 62
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 7:02 pm Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
|
|
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| Quote: | From: jos@catnook.com (Jos Backus)
Date: Mon 15 Jul, 2002
Subject: Re: Package system flaws?
If portability is at all important, I think we should abandon discussing the
FreeBSD pkg_* tools (and portupgrade) and focus on what the OpenPackages
people are doing.
|
I wouldn't go that far.
A portable application vendor can always just skip the system's preferred
packaging tools and use tar(1) and an install script if necessary.
However, packaging the application up for platforms you care about isn't
excessively painful, even if a universal set of tools would be the ideal
situation.
Most if the pain in developing portable applications lies elsewhere; all
the packaging tools do is allow the vendor to transport the results of
"make install" on his system to the customer's system in a reliable and
reproducible way.
Cheers,
Mark.
--
Mark Valentine, Thuvia Labs <mark@thuvia.co.uk> <http://www.thuvia.co.uk>
"Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich." Mark Valentine uses
"We're kind of stupid that way." *munch* *munch* and endorses FreeBSD
-- <http://www.calvinandhobbes.com> <http://www.freebsd.org>
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Terry Lambert
*nix forums Guru
Joined: 19 Mar 2002
Posts: 434
|
| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 8:01 pm Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
|
|
|
Mark Valentine wrote:
| Quote: | From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com
Rather than trusting people with this, I would like to see the
ability to learn institutionalized in the project and the tools,
so that when individuals responsible leave, either voluntarily,
or by getting hit by a bus, that the learning is not lost.
I'd like to hear your ideas on how to make _that_ happen! :-)
[vague rant snipped]
I didn't see anything in there concrete enough to take action on...
We already know about the problem of modularising the base system,
and I'm not sure how reminding us of that helps to "institutionalize
the ability to learn".
|
If you don't want to hear the answer, don't ask the question.
If you need something less "vague" than a generalization of
conclusions, then try:
http://www.americanscientist.org/articles/95articles/Saperstein-full.html
It takes systems engineering of the institution itself, in order
for it to be able to learn, and thus institutionalize knowledge,
rather than embedding it in its people.
"Modularizing the base system" is not a problem; it is the
solution to a problem -- and not just an ends in itself, as your
lack of certainty implies. Performing that task has consequences
significantly above and beyond the direct consequences any casual
observer would expect.
-- Terry
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Jos Backus
*nix forums beginner
Joined: 10 Jul 2002
Posts: 15
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| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 10:34 pm Post subject:
Re: Package system flaws?
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On Mon, Jul 15, 2002 at 09:44:45PM +0700, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote:
| Quote: | We did have a very powerful one until recently -- Perl. I guess the
fact it was removed from the base is for a very good reason.
|
I don't think ``we don't want a powerful scripting language in the base
system'' was one of them.
| Quote: | Oh please, can you show us something essential for base enough that
could not be implemented in a sh/sed/awk way? I somewhat doubt it.
|
portupgrade (Sure, anything that can be done in Ruby can be done in C; no
need to make that argument again).
| Quote: | 'cmon, it's pretty clear that Perl or Ruby is more of an overhead than of
worth. Traditionally, UNIX lived for 30+ years without need for a monster
like Perl or Ruby, in the base, clearly showing us that sh/awk/sed is a
[very] decent scripting facility.
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As must be clear by now, I respectfully beg to differ.
--
Jos Backus _/ _/_/_/ Santa Clara, CA
_/ _/ _/
_/ _/_/_/
_/ _/ _/ _/
jos@catnook.com _/_/ _/_/_/ require 'std/disclaimer'
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