src and pkgsrc (Was: RCS Discussion)

[Justin C. Sherrill]

On Thu, August 7, 2008 4:36 pm, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 04:26:41PM -0400, Justin C. Sherrill wrote:
>> On Thu, August 7, 2008 4:08 pm, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
>> > - It is outdated even at the time of release, e.g. for security
>> updates.
>>
>> Aren't security updates applied to the most recent quarterly pkgsrc
>> release?  Assuming they are, people would at least be able to update
>> using
>> downloaded binaries, which is a somewhat more realistic goal.
>
> Yes. But if you ship the pkgsrc tree, it can't really be up-to-date.
> If you expect users to use binary packages, shipping a pkgsrc tree
> doesn't make sense.

If people are using binary packages, they, sooner or later, will try to
install a package that wasn't built because of an error or licensing, and
have to go to source.  Shipping with a pkgsrc quarterly release tree and
then building packages from that tree makes it much more likely that the
versions required would match up.

The alternative scenario is someone installing perhaps 80% of what they
want through binary packages, having to go to source builds for the rest,
and ending up rebuilding and upgrading the already-installed binary
packages just to catch up on dependencies.