# Source packages



## ronaldlees (Sep 5, 2014)

So, this is my first login with Netsurf3 on FreeBSD.  Sweet! It seems to work fine even without javascript. Now I  will recompile curl to use PolarSSL (since conveniently, Netsurf uses curl).  I'm not sure what the switchout buys for me, or subtracts from me, in terms of capabilities/securities - but oh well...  you pays your money... as the saying goes.

Now on to my question...

On FreeBSD, when I'm doing builds from source, using ports, everything is kopecetic so long as the port is fairly recent.  If the port is being built on a system that's  a couple versions behind the current iteration of FreeBSD, there is a strong likelihood that the sources will be unfetchable.  So, then I go looking for the sources in a really inefficient manual manner.  

Debian gets around this problem by having source packages.  I wonder if FreeBSD has ever considered a source package repo?  Maybe the licensing would get in the way?

Just wondering...


----------



## ronaldlees (Sep 5, 2014)

Just read the "ports questions do not belong here" thread.  Sorry.  Perhaps the mods could move the post?


----------



## SirDice (Sep 5, 2014)

All versions of FreeBSD use the same ports tree. So you just have to update it on the older systems.


----------



## ronaldlees (Sep 5, 2014)

SirDice said:
			
		

> All versions of FreeBSD use the same ports tree. So you just have to update it on the older systems.



Thanks for moving the post!

Well, yes I know I can upgrade the ports tree.  Some source distribs dissappear forever though, so the newer sources wouldn't exist. And - there are fixups sometimes needed (for third party source) even after a port upgrade. 

I think it'd be an admin/resouce nightmare to have a source repo, and I think that Debian's source packages are a hit and miss proposition.

The licensing would potentially be a problem.  Debian already has a system to vet packages based on license (must be super-GNU-compat), so they don't worry abut what they have in their repo.  Since FreeBSD is a much more lenient environ, some license problems could pop up in a source repo.  I guess I answered my own question.


----------



## ronaldlees (Sep 5, 2014)

Double posts now.  This is Friday but not the thirteen'th.  Maybe a Netsurf thing?  Dunno.


----------



## kpa (Sep 5, 2014)

The thing that FreeBSD is missing is packaging the ports and the distfiles together in some way where you could checkout just the bare essentials of a port (including its dependencies) for it to build at its selected version. This is very hard to solve because the ports tree is seen as complete central repository that you're supposed to checkout as one whole anyway and the distfiles are "disconnected" completely from the tree.


----------



## SirDice (Sep 5, 2014)

If the sources disappear the port will too. Keep in mind that the ports system usually downloads the sources from their original sites.


----------



## kpa (Sep 5, 2014)

SirDice said:
			
		

> If the sources disappear the port will too. Keep in mind that the ports system usually downloads the sources from their original sites.



Yes,  disappearance of a known site(s) for distfiles can lead to removal of a port. FreeBSD ports has a policy of not hosting the distfiles at freebsd.org unless it's seen really necessary.


----------



## ronaldlees (Sep 5, 2014)

kpa said:
			
		

> The thing that FreeBSD is missing is packaging the ports and the distfiles together in some way where you could checkout just the bare essentials of a port (including its dependencies) for it to build at its selected version. This is very hard to solve because the ports tree is seen as complete central repository that you're supposed to checkout as one whole anyway and the distfiles are "disconnected" completely from the tree.



Yup.

I guess most people just have more common sense than I, and run the latest and greatest incarnations.  Then ports works fabulously. The ports all-in-one deal has been hashed about on many threads, so I'm not adding much.

I have a personal inclination to run old stuff all the time.  I just like the simple stuff.  Last week I visited this forum with FreeBSD 3 and Mosaic.  Talk about simple!  (applies to both FreeBSD3 and Mosaic).  What I have generally done, is just to keep my own source code repo.  There aren't enuf troglodytes like myself out there to make for too much worry about this meme by the FreeBSD people.


----------

