===== Comparison of FreeBSD package building technologies =====

:!: This page is of historical interest only.  These days, the recommended technology is poudriere.

There are various solutions used in building multiple packages for %%FreeBSD%%.  In a perfect world these would all be based on the same code as a reusable toolkit.  In the meantime, here is an overall summary of what each one supports.

==== Project Overviews ====

^ Project ^ Also Known As ^ Maintainer ^ Source Code ^
| pointyhat | (old) Package Building Cluster | [[http://www.freebsd.org/portmgr/|portmgr]] | [[http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/projects/portbuild/|pointyhat repo]] |
| [[http://tinderbox.marcuscom.com/|tinderbox]] | Ports Tinderbox, %%MarcusCom%% tinderbox | [[JoeMarcus|Joe Marcus Clarke]] | [[http://www.marcuscom.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/portstools/tinderbox/|tinderbox repo]] |
| [[http://www.redports.org/|redports]] |  | [[BernhardFroehlich|Bernhard Froehlich]] | [[http://svn.bluelife.at/index.cgi/redports|redports repo]] |
| [[https://github.com/freebsd/poudriere|poudriere]] |  | [[BaptisteDaroussin|Baptiste Daroussin]] & [[BryanDrewery|Bryan Drewery]] | [[https://github.com/freebsd/poudriere/|poudriere repo]] |

:!: The **ports tinderbox** is a completely different codebase than the **[[Tinderbox|src tinderbox]]**.  On occasion you will hear people just refer to **tinderbox**.  You will have to figure out from context which one they mean.

==== Feature Sets ====

^ Project ^ cmdline? ^ UI? ^ entire tree? ^ partial tree? ^ single port? ^ -incremental? ^ distributed? ^ multiarch? ^
| pointyhat | only | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| tinderbox | Y | web-based | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y |
| redports | svn | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| poudriere | only | web-based | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y |

==== Discussion ====

^ Project ^ strengths ^ weaknesses ^ comments ^
| pointyhat | whole trees, incremental runs | fragile, hard to set up | best for building whole trees |
| tinderbox | good documentation, web-based UI, turnkey, available in ports as ports-mgmt/tinderbox | not distributed | best for individual user installations |
| redports | public service, multiuser, modern user interface, many environments | Can take a long time as the queue gets backed up. | package building uses ports tinderbox |
| poudriere | Fast, incremental, jails, no deps (using jail,sh,ZFS[optional]), easy to setup and use, easy to run customized build. Supports cross arch and release builds. Highly tested with PKGNG. Builds packages in parallel. |  | [[http://people.freebsd.org/~bdrewery/poudriere-0515.pdf|Overview]] |

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{{tag>Historical}}