BSD Packaging Systems
- May 26, 2006
- The Persistence of Porting
- FreeBSD Ports and Packages
- OpenBSD Ports and Packages
- NetBSD pkgsrc
- Summary
- Inside Modern X11 Programming
- Making JavaScript Fast, Part 2
- Security in Your Pocket: OpenBSD on ARM
- Making JavaScript Fast, Part 1
- The Failure of the GPL
- How Not To Optimize
- A Half-Way Step to Apple’s Source Code: An Interview with David Chisnall
- Advanced Flow Control for Objective-C
- Erica Sadun on the iPhone SDK, OS X, and the Computing Landscape
- From NeXTSTEP to Cocoa: Erik Buck on the Development of Cocoa and Objective-C
- Fun with the Objective-C Runtime
- Marcus Zarra and Matt Long on Core Animation
- Steve Kochan on the Evolution of Objective-C
- The Technology NeXT Gave the World
- Where the Web and the Desktop Meet: An Interview with Lee Barney
- Pandora: An Open Console
- The Future of Wireless Networking
- GNU or Linux?
- Debugging C-Family Languages
- How Small Is Your PC? The Rise of Netbooks and Other Small Form-Factor PCs
- David Chisnall's CPU Feature Wishlist
- The Dynamic Languages Renaissance
- Robert Seacord on the CERT C Secure Coding Standard
- Objective-C for C++ Programmers, Part 3
- Objective-C for C++ Programmers, Part 2
- Objective-C for C++ Programmers, Part 1
- Writing Insecure C, Part 3
- Writing Insecure C, Part 2
- Writing Insecure C, Part 1
- iRex iLiad e-Reader: Linux's Answer to the Kindle?
- How It Works: Filesystems
- How the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure Works
- How It Works: Virtual Memory
- What Is C For?
- The Future of eBooks
- Imagining an Open Network
- Understanding How Xen Approaches Device Drivers
- Examining the Legendary HURD Kernel
- Competition Among Open Source Compilers
- Inside Your OS: What is a Process Scheduler, and How Does it Work?
- Bad UI of the Week: Read This (OK/Cancel)
- The End of the Desktop Era
- The What and Why of Open IM
- A Look at the Modern X Server
- The Future of Digital Media
- The Future of Identity
- Bad UI of the Week: Ask Forgiveness, Not Permission
- Copyright Versus Free Software
- Is Computer Science Dying?
- A Brief History of Programming, Part 2
- A Brief History of Programming, Part 1
- The 700MHz Question: Will the Wireless Spectrum Auction Lead to Innovation or More of the Same?
- Bad UI of the Week: The Menu Bar
- The Dark Corners of x86
- Bad UI of the Week: The Cross-Platform User Interface
- Bad UI of the Week: The Mythical "is Like" Operator
- Bad UI of the Week: Don't Make Me Tell You Twice...
- Bad UI of the Week: Kettles and Washing Machines
- The BBC iPlayer Controversy Explained
- Bad UI of the Week: The Mitten Mouse
- Bad User Interface of the Week: File It Under “Bad”
- Bad User Interface of the Week: The DVD
- A Roundup of Free Operating Systems
- DragonFly BSD: UNIX for Clusters?
- CPU Wars, Part 3: Put Your Left ARM In
- CPU Wars, Part 2: POWER to the People
- CPU Wars, Part 1: When the Chips Are Down
- ZFS Uncovered
- Vector Programming with GCC
- Free Software Versus Open Source Software
- What Programming Languages Should You Know?
- Standardizing UNIX
- Prolog: Logic Programming for Rapid Development
- POSIX Parallel Programming, Part 3: Threads
- POSIX Parallel Programming, Part 2: Message Passing
- POSIX Parallel Programming, Part 1
- The Nokia 770 Revisited
- The Open Source Desktop Myth
- Separating Style and Content: LaTeX and Typesetting
- GNUstep: A Free Software alternative to OpenStep
- Behind the Scenes of Objective-C 2.0
- The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
- What Makes a Good Programming Language?
- Emulation: Role-Playing for Computers
- NetBSD: Not Just for Toasters
- POSIX Asynchronous I/O
- Breaking Down GPL Version 3
- The Role of Binary Drivers in a Free OS
- Security Is a UI Problem
- Debunking the Myth of High-level Languages
- A Taste of Erlang, a Dynamic, Asynchronous Message-Passing Language
- Alternatives to LAMP
- BSD Packaging Systems
- DRM: Digital Rights or Digital Restrictions?
- Introducing OpenBSD 3.9
- The Need for Virtualization and Xen
- Making Effective Software TCO Calculations
- 10 Things I Hate About U(NIX) Revisited: Readers Speak
- Comparing Open Source Licenses: GPL vs. BSDL
- BSD: The Other Free UNIX Family
- Measuring the Effectiveness of Application Security Policies
- The Cost of Free Software
- Nokia 770 Internet Tablet Week-long Test Drive
- 10 Things I Hate About (U)NIX
- The Lure of Open Source Software: Why Consider It for Your Business?
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The Persistence of Porting
In a previous article, I covered the differences between the major BSDs, but glossed over an area where the BSD family has traditionally excelled: package management. Each member of the BSD family has a slightly different approach in this area, although they share common themes.
In the early days of UNIX, each vendor would extend the code in its own way. Because many of these extensions were useful, they would be used by developers. Unfortunately, when those developers tried to run their code on another flavor of UNIX, they would find that it didn’t have the required features, or implemented features with a slightly different interface. Instead of the "write once, compile anywhere" vision that UNIX vendors of the time were selling, there was a "write once, port everywhere" feeling.
The situation has improved significantly over the last decade or so with the development of UNIX standards. The nice thing about standards, as the saying goes, is that there are so many to choose from. In the UNIX world, the two most popular are POSIX and the Single UNIX Specification. Most UNIX-like systems come close to compliance with these standards, although there are usually small gaps.
Because the gaps in support are not in the same place, some porting is still required. This situation is exacerbated by developers who still rely on operating system–specific features, such as detecting processor type by reading /proc/cpuinfo on Linux. Ideally, the fixes would be incorporated by the project’s developer. Unfortunately, this process usually takes time, so it’s common for each package to have a set of patches associated with it that allow it to run on (or integrate better with) the target operating system.
In addition to managing the application of patches, a good packaging system should also handle the installation of dependencies. All of the BSD ports systems do this, as well as providing methods for uninstalling packages.
This article discusses the three major porting systems:
- FreeBSD ports and packages
- OpenBSD ports and packages
- NetBSD’s pkgsrc
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