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[MarkLinimon note: this page is a couple of years stale and needs to be updated] [MarkLinimon further note: you may wish to start with this discussion on the netbsd-users mailing list]]
Feature Comparison of FreeBSD ports with other packaging systems
TODO: in progress, use footnotes. Also use colors and text like VCS cmp.
| Feature/subject | pkgsrc | (FreeBSD) ports | (OpenBSD) ports | mports | Portage | dpkg/rpm + apt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Used by OSes | NetBSD, DragonflyBSD | FreeBSD | OpenBSD | MidnightBSD | Gentoo, Sabayon | Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Redhat |
| Ports | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ 1) |
| Packages | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | {o} 2) | ✔ |
| Primary focus (src/bin) | ? | src | bin | ? | src | bin |
| Packages and ports integration | ? | {o} 3) | ✔ 4) | ? | ? | ✘ |
| Many packages out of same port | ? | {o} 5) | ✔ | ? | ✘ | ? |
| Apps divided in many packages | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ 6) |
| Self-contained packages | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Building in a clean environment | ✔ | {o} (tinderbox/portbuild) | ✔ | ✔ (recently) | ? | ✔ |
PREFIX clean | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ | ✘ |
CFLAGS clean | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
| Compilation options framework | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Rerrolled distfiles support | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Differential updates (deltas) | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
MASTER_SITE priority/sorting | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Hack collection / porting scripts | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Parallel building | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Multiple versions of the same app | {o} (dirs) | {o} (dirs) | ? | {o} (dirs) | ✔ (*.ebuild) | {o} (branches) |
| Multiple coexisting versions of the same app (symlink/wrapper) | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Virtual ports/packages | ? | ✘ | ? | ? | ✔ | ✔ |
| Config files updating tool | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Startup scripts management tool | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Automatic restart of daemons | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Automatic packaging list | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Automatic management of users/groups | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Initial configuration and integration of apps | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| License framework (info/agreement) | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
References
| Symbol | Descrption |
|---|---|
| ✔ | Fully supported |
| {o} | Partially supported, workaround used or WIP |
| ✘ | Not supported |
References
- Infrastructure PRs usually contain patches, see also closed ones which were not committed.
- Number of packages of Linux distributions (note that Debian and Ubuntu split most of them in components and offer many built with different options).
- Lightweight FreeBSD package cluster in a jail ( TODO: take ideas from here).
- Upak (effort to unify packages).
- A discussion of what pkgsrc offers that FreeBSD does not.
1)
There are source packages, which contain both the full source code of the program and local patches, and are manually compiled and uploaded by the maintainer.
2)
A Gentoo derivate called Sabayon is developing a tool called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabayon_Linux#Features entropy], which uses
binmerge for binary packages.3)
Some features are only supported by ports, like versioned dependencies. Also ports install directly, without generating packages.
4)
Ports create the package and then uses the package tools to install.
5)
Shared code in one port, called by a slave port which only defines the required options (requires a directory with a
Makefile for each package).6)
Packages are split in
-doc, -dev, -common, -data, etc. The good point is that packages which don't depend on the architecture are built only once, runtime dependencies don't require headers, and documentation is optional. However to build anything you need all the -dev versions.