A FreeBSD lie: we have package management

My love-hate story with FreeBSD has begun about 10 years ago or so. On one hand, FreeBSD is not as bleeding-edge-obsessed as Linux is. On the other, it is retarded, which is not too bad, considering that being bleeding-edge-obsessed is much worse. Long story short: I became interested. Fast forward 2022: FreeBSD 13.0 is released. And it immediately grinds to a halt, and here's why.

Try to do something with a freshly installed FreeBSD, and you immediately need pkg. Of course, you can use ports as long as you are prepared to spend hours in front of the terminal, answering popping up configuration screens. Of course, genius degenerates in FreeBSD development team have not given a thought to the idea that someone might have better things to do than waiting for each dependency of a ports package to be configured, compiled, lather, rinse, and repeat (needless to say, wait for Raspberry Pi 3 to compile something - good luck with that!). So, they have not allowed all configuration screens to be shown in the beginning, followed with however-long-it-takes compilation. This is why I prefer to install packages from repositories rather than roll my own from ports. Are you still following? Good!

So, run pkg install whatever in FreeBSD 13.0, and it will soon give you this POS:

# pkg install -y apg
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
The following 1 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:
        apg: 0.4.1_4,1

Number of packages to be installed: 1

The process will require 5 MiB more space.
2 MiB to be downloaded.
[1/1] Fetching apg-0.4.1_4,1.pkg: 100%    2 MiB 557.3kB/s    00:03
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
[1/1] Installing apg-0.4.1_4,1...
Child process pid=84483 terminated abnormally: Bus error

This bus error has become so famous that SirDice, FreeBSD forums admin and moderator, immediately responds with this recipe whenever someone asks WTF:

pkg bootstrap -f

An unsuspecting victim bows and thanks him, but happiness is a passing feeling: pkg in 13.0 is biodegradable. A few commands later, it self-destructs again:

# pkg list | less
/usr/local/bin/7z
/usr/local/bin/7zz
/usr/local/share/doc/7-zip/7zC.txt
/usr/local/share/doc/7-zip/7zFormat.txt
/usr/local/share/doc/7-zip/Methods.txt
/usr/local/share/doc/7-zip/lzma.txt
/usr/local/share/doc/7-zip/readme.txt
/usr/local/share/doc/7-zip/src-history.txt
/usr/local/share/licenses/7-zip-21.07_2/BSD3CLAUSE
/usr/local/share/licenses/7-zip-21.07_2/LGPL21+
/usr/local/share/licenses/7-zip-21.07_2/LICENSE
/usr/local/share/licenses/7-zip-21.07_2/UNRAR
/usr/local/share/licenses/7-zip-21.07_2/catalog.mk
/usr/local/share/man/man1/7zz.1.gz
/usr/local/libexec/apache24/mod_fastcgi.so
Child process pid=96220 terminated abnormally: Bus error

I've learned about this issue more than 6 months ago and inquired as to WTF, only to be told, TADA, to do:

pkg bootstrap -f

6 months later, still no fix to this. GFYS, user! FreeBSD team has better things to do than to fix a bugged package manager.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 06:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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