[OpenIndiana-discuss] A dumb idea

[Hung Nguyen Gia]

What about just import the FreeBSD Ports system and like DragonflyBSD uses transformations scripts (https://github.com/DragonFlyBSD/DeltaPorts) to transform it into illumos-ports something like this (https://github.com/DragonFlyBSD/DPorts) and enjoying the large amount of software we will never able to port by our own with little effort?

Yes, FreeBSD and DragonflyBSD share more in common than FreeBSD and Illumos.

But people have done this for MacPorts anyway.

We can even patch the illumos-ports to output IPS packages instead of FreeBSD's pkg.

This doesn't mean to dump our current oi-userland. illumos-ports and oi-userland could co-exist.

I know it sounds dumb but let's just give it a thought experiment and imagine.

BTW, the case between IPS pkg and FreeBSD pkg is where the copycat get it better than the original.

Yes, FreeBSD pkg is a clone of IPS pkg, for FreeBSD.

But they didn't use Python and since their OS still has to installed on VPS with little RAM so they can't make the ZFS assumption like us, so FreeBSD pkg doesn't depend on ZFS, it works just fine with UFS.

IMHO, FreeBSD is simpler and has better performance than IPS pkg.

Yet it supports the almost the same features. It could operate on FreeBSD 'jail', too. Just like IPS pkg could operate on 'zones'.

IPS pkg is overly complicated and a resource hog with poor performance.

Unfortunately, we pretty much have to stick with it, for the sake of compatibility.