Re: very interesting but what f Non Linux distros

[Scott Shawcroft]

Julian,
Thanks for the info.  I treated it like you have ports trees for each major branch and that the minor versions are just snapshots.  Therefore, I ignore minor version all together.

"Avg # New Rels"  is the number of newer releases for each package averaged over a set of packages.  Does that make more sense?

The data was not too hard to get because I'm just using the INDEX file.  However, because I've never used FreeBSD I'm wary the crawl may not be working fully.  I haven't seen new releases in the crawl logs.  Your help on this would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Scott

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:31 PM, Julian Elischer <jul...@elischer.org> wrote:

Scott Shawcroft wrote:

Julian,
I've added FreeBSD to OSWatershed.  Please check it out and let me know what you think.

I'm happy.. the numbers are interesting.

A couple  of points that may be of interst to you..
While ffreeBSD branches on each major number release.. so that,
say, 7.0 goes to 7.1 to 7,2 but 6.4 might happen between 7.1 and 7.2
(for production users, we keep old branches active for a while)

for info on that, see:
http://www.freebsd.org/releng/

http://security.freebsd.org/

however that really describes hte base system only.
Though some things such as bind, sendmail, are in the base system
(* see later)

the ports on the other hand are not branched.
there is one forward moving  timeline. A release on any branch simply takes a snapshot of the ports/packages tree at teh time or release.
(with a freeze to allow things to settle).

this means that if the order of releases in time is
6.2 7.0 6.3 7.1 6.3 7.2 8.0 6.4 7.3 8.0

the packages will be updated to the releases in that order.
so the question is "at the time of any release, how far behind
is the ports tree?" and that is not really dependent on which branch
or release we are talking about.

Many people use the "portsnap" package  or other tools to keep their system automatically running whatever is the latest in the ports tree,
so while they may be running 6.3 their expernal packages may be
at the current 'head of line' revisions for the ports tree.


(*) as for built in packages (e.g. bind, openSSH, OpenSSL,
sendmail etc)
While the revision numbers will increment slowly, that does not
mean that bug fixes are not going in. Usually security fixes are
made by patching the known 'in tree' revision rather than upgrading
it entirely. if a user wants the newer version it is usually possible to overlay the standard one with a newer one from the ports tree.

Thanks for the work!
..

Oh BTW what does the "Avg # New Rels" field mean?


Julian.
(and was it hard to get the info you needed?)

~Scott

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 10:17 PM, Scott Shawcroft <scott.s...@gmail.com <mailto:scott.s...@gmail.com>> wrote:

   Julian,
   I have full intention of doing this at some point.  In the last few
   months I have not gotten the chance to do something this major.    However, its totally doable.  Perhaps you want to take a stab at the
   crawl script?
   ~Scott


   On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Julian Elischer

   <jul...@elischer.org <mailto:jul...@elischer.org>> wrote:

       e.g. FreeBSD

       uses the same packages from third parties but keeps itself
       slightly insulted via it's "ports" tree.

       http://www.freshports.org/ is a convenient way to get FreeBSD's
       status on any particular port/package.


       regards.

       Julian

[Scott Shawcroft]

Excellent!  Thanks for letting me know a better way and putting me in contact with Dan.
~Scott

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 1:05 AM, Julian Elischer <jul...@elischer.org> wrote:

Scott Shawcroft wrote:

Julian,

Thanks for the info.  I treated it like you have ports trees for each major branch and that the minor versions are just snapshots.  Therefore, I ignore minor version all together.

"Avg # New Rels"  is the number of newer releases for each package averaged over a set of packages.  Does that make more sense?

The data was not too hard to get because I'm just using the INDEX file.  However, because I've never used FreeBSD I'm wary the crawl may not be working fully.  I haven't seen new releases in the crawl logs.  Your help on this would be much appreciated.

the INDEX file is problematic because (though I'm not an expert) it
is not generated all the time, but rather now and then when ever a
release is coming. It's not in the CVS tree as far as I can see.

I've Cc'd Dan Langille who can definitely tell you where
you should look as he's done it all before. He did the "freshports"
site that tracks all the state of all the ports (all 20,000 of them).

I am absolutely certain that at any given moment he has the exact information you want somewhere on his site just waiting for you to come and scoop it up. In fact he also has an RSS feed with
constant flow of port updates which might be another way for you to track the FreeBSD ports for your project.

There are other ways of doing this, for example mirroring the CVS ports tree (it's not THAT big as it's just Makefiles really).
or using cvsup (or csup) to get just the changes mirrored to you,
however I'd have a word with Dan first. It may save you a lot of time :-)

Dan, Scott here is doing a comparison of package freshness between various "distros" (for want of a better word) and is including
FreeBSD ports as a comparison point. See his into site at
http://oswatershed.org/ for his first freeBSD attempt.

Julian

Thanks,
Scott

regards Julian

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:31 PM, Julian Elischer <jul...@elischer.org <mailto:jul...@elischer.org>> wrote: