Re: assimilating OpenBSD

[eichin@thok.org (Mark W. Eichin)]

> Now on the same note...  BSD has a great packaging and porting system,
> arguably as good if not better than debians.  I like the idea of using

It might be arguable, but the argument ends very quickly, when I ask
someone to explain "how do I upgrade something that has
dependencies".  The BSD side kind of splutters to a halt at that point
(hint: any answer involving "uninstall the packages that depend on it,
first" means "thank you for playing, get back to us when you have a
packaging system"...)

packages/ports are great for building software *once*.  Experience
(with debian and elsewhere) makes it pretty clear that no software is
good enough to stand unchanged for any significant length of time, and
that smooth upgrading is the key reason to even *have* a packaging
system...