Cross-platform package building: Pkgsrc vs. Ravenports (2/2)

[New to Gemini? Have a look at my Gemini FAQ.] This article was bi-posted to Gemini and the Web; Gemini version is here: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/kraileth/neunix/2021/cross-platform_package_building_pt2.gmi The previous article (part 1) on cross-platform package management / package building covered the basics by taking a look at what some of the many difficulties are. It briefly described some …

Cross-platform package building: Pkgsrc vs. Ravenports (1/2)

[New to Gemini? Have a look at my Gemini FAQ.] This article was bi-posted to Gemini and the Web; Gemini version is here: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/kraileth/neunix/2021/cross-platform_package_building_pt1.gmi This is the first of a two articles on cross-platform package management / package building. It covers the basics by discussing why it is actually surprisingly (to many people) difficult to …

Ravenports explained: Why not just join XYZ?

As the year comes to an end, I've seen quite some interest in my previous post. There has been a question on Reddit what the benefit(s) of Raven over Pkgsrc might be and why the developers don't simply join an existing effort instead of building something new. I've touched on this topic about half a …

Ravenports: Status update and the Dragonfly case

This is part three of a series of posts on cross-platform package management. The previous posts contained general thoughts about software packaging today and a somewhat in-depth overview on the Ravenports package system. In this post I want to give some more background on why Ravenports might be interesting to some people and explain the …

Ravenports: A modern, cross-platform package solution

This post is about Ravenports, a universal package system und building framework for *nix systems (DragonflyBSD, FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris at the time of this writing). It's a relatively young project that begun in late February 2017 after a longer period of careful planning. The idea is to provide a unified, convenient experience in a …

Modern-day package requirements

A little rant first: Many thanks to the EU (and all the people who decide on topics related to tech without having any idea on how tech stuff actually works). Their GDPR is the reason for me having been really occupied with work this month! Email being a topic that I'm teaching myself while writing …

Updating FreeBSD 4.11 (4/4) – Reflecting radical resurrection

In the first post of this mini series I wrote about legacy systems and installing FreeBSD 4.11. The second one shows how to configure the fresh system for remote access, bootstrap Pkgsrc, install Subversion to checkout FreeBSD code and update the system to the stable branch. And part three mainly deals with upgrading OpenSSH and …

Updating FreeBSD 4.11 (3/4) – Neophyte’s notorious necromancy

The first post of this mini series was about legacy systems in general and about what installing the old FreeBSD 4.11 is like. In the second one I showed the initial configuration of the system, how to SSH into it despite the obsolete DSA host key and how to bootstrap pkgsrc, NetBSD's portable ports tree. …

Updating FreeBSD 4.11 (2/4) – Digging up old graves

In part one I wrote about Legacy systems in general and showed a FreeBSD 4.11 installation for those of my readers who are interested in software history. This post is about the first part of updating this fresh 4.11 system to a state that's a bit less catastrophic. Remember: FreeBSD 4.11 was released in 2005 …