[Dovecot] OT - Re: Dovecot 1.1.x and 1.2.x differencies

[Charles Sprickman]

On Wed, 16 Jun 2010, Charles Marcus wrote:

> On 2010-06-16 11:39 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>> Yes, but Gentoo isn't supplying binaries. The amount of project
>> time/effort to get all those Debian binaries compiled and out the
>> door is gargantuan compared to the Gentoo source model.
>
> Ah, forgot about that... its amazing how you get used to the freedom of
> a source based system.

Yeah, I've been enjoying that with FreeBSD for a very long time.  They 
have "packages" as well, but I never really used them - what are the 
chances that the maintainer and I both want the exact same compile-time 
options?

> The biggest argument against source based installs is they take too
> long. On reasonably modern hardware it isn't much of an issue, and even
> on older hardware - I mean, really how often do you have to do the
> installation? Mine last for many years...

I do binary installs of the OS, source installs of the additional 
software, source based upgrades of the OS.  I also get something that I 
haven't yet seen in the mainstream linux distros, which is a clear 
delineation between what's the "OS" and what's "added-on".  If it's under 
/usr/local somewhere, it came from elsewhere.  Otherwise, it's part of the 
OS.  Makes upgrades simple, even if I'm moving /usr/local wholesale from 
one box to another - since I have a nice stable ABI and backwards 
compatibility, I can take a bunch of stuff built for say, FreeBSD 4.8 and 
run it on a new 8.0 box, then upgrade at my leisure.

>> My point was that building binaries is one of the reasons it takes
>> Debian so long to get a new release out. AFAIK, Gentoo isn't shackled
>> with this issue.
>
> Correct, it isn't, and with USE flags, it makes custom compiling (and
> recompiling if needs change) with support for *precisely* what you need
> extremely easy even for people like me... ;)

FreeBSD supports much fewer architectures, but I know they still have 
dealt with issues trying to crank out packages for a few archs plus a few 
supported versions of the OS.  I think Yahoo recently gave them a bunch of 
boxes to help with this, but yeah, when you start thinking about building 
not just what *you* might install, but every X11 app available, every 
window manager, etc. that's a pretty hefty chunk of cpu time, regardless 
of how modern your build cluster is.

And yeah, having either a config file or make flags to repeatedly build 
the software with the same options kicks ass. :)

Charles

> -- 
>
> Best regards,
>
> Charles
>