Re: using pkgsrc and the NetBSD ports collection, anyone?

[Jonathan H. <jon...@on...>]

On 15/10/2003 17:26, Will Partain wrote:

> Also, because I don't
> deploy/reveal with the pkgsrc stuff, the user isn't going to
> see those extra 40 packages anyway.  They're still simply
> going to see plain old /our/bin/emacs -- which just happens
> to have been carefully maintained by the NetBSD guys :-)

OK, I see what you mean now. This makes sense.

>> I'd help, but the thing is that I'm actually quite fond of the Arusha
>> package manager ;-)
> 
> I can sympathise w/ this point of view.

Sandboxing is the main benefit for me. I tend not to reveal any library
packages. Thanks to the rather cool way Sidai does runtime linking, I can
safely install conflicting versions of libraries and build new systems
without breaking running systems.

On the web servers I look after, we don't reveal PHP, but load it in the
Apache config file directly from the deploy directory. When upgrading to a
newer version of PHP, I can build a new one with whatever new libraries and
extensions I want and then just modify the Apache config and gracefully
restart Apache - allowing a hot upgrade without any downtime.

Then, when it turns out that the new version of PHP has just completely
buggered half a dozen critical sites, I can modify the config again and
downgrade back to the previous one just as fast ;-)

This sort of thing is Just Too Scary when your build system is bashing
libraries that are in runtime use.

Jonathan

-- 
Jonathan Hogg
Director

One Good Idea Ltd.

<http://www.onegoodidea.com/>