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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.nacamar.de!fu-berlin.de!IN-Berlin.DE!fub!mind.de!nostromo.in-berlin.de!ripley From: ripley@nostromo.in-berlin.de (H. Eckert) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: missing packages Date: 31 Mar 1997 13:42:12 GMT Organization: Private access site (FreeBSD 2.1-R), Berlin, Germany, Europe Lines: 57 Message-ID: <slrn5jvfpk.4ak.ripley@nortobor.nostromo.in-berlin.de> References: <5hbqlk$g1u$1@news.cc.utah.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: nortobor.nostromo.in-berlin.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: slrn (0.8.8.2 UNIX) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:38271 udplmc@FIX.TIN.DOMAIN (Lloyd M Caldwell): > It would be MUCH better (IMHO) to NOT list packages > that aren't on the install media. There are several difficulties in putting all packages (and I think the problem generally applies to ports as well) on the distribution CDs. The obvious one is disk space. The CDs are quite stuffed as they are so everything won't fit on them. Some things have to be left out... The probably not so obviuous one is licensing. While I hate it to download essential software like pgp the US export restrictions make it necessary to keep pgp off the CD (unless there are enough disks sold to allow for two seperate issues US/international, but I won't like to have the administrative nightmare for this). OTOH you do have a point about the frustrating part of having to first hunt down some package over the net before you can install it. In theory your machine is well connected to the internet and the software is stored longtime for your retrieval at the location indicated in the port's Makefile. In reality your connection may not be so fast or quite expensive (some people even don't have one at all or not from their BSD machine) and when you decide to add a package half a year later, it's gone from the original site or version x (which the port is based upon) has been superseeded by version y and the old release is thrown away. To improve this situation will probably take some effort not to be underestimated. At first we may have to find some categories for all packages which can be used to determine - the importance of each software package (be it a pre-made package or a port) and whether it needs to be stuffed on the CD or not - the (in)dependence of the FreeBSD release. Most user-level applications that are ported now (thus their port is in FreeBSD-2.2/ports) run on 2.1.x, too. Some depend on new features of 2.2, but are not easily recognized when browsing through the collection. It would be nice if the FreeBSD team had the capacity to keep all packages in the version that matches the ports' MD5 checksum and it was possible to have a global setting to retrieve the archives from the nearest complete FreeBSD-site. Greetings, Ripley -- H. Eckert, 10777 Berlin, Germany ISO 8859-1: Ä=Ae, Ö=Oe, Ü=Ue, ä=ae, ö=oe, ü=ue, ß=sz. "(Technobabbel)" (Jetrel) - "Müssen wir uns diesen Schwachsinn wirklich anhören?" (Neelix)