Sunday, March 06, 2011

Haiku ports

Now that I'm getting much more familiar with FreeBSD, I'm very impressed with its ports system that provides a vast array of software "recipes" where whatever you want can (generally) be compiled and installed from source very quickly.
Once you've decided what you want and where it is (what folder?) in the ports system, installation involves no more than issuing a "make install clean" command and waiting.
I don't believe I've ever started a compile that's failed in FreeBSD.
With this background, I had another look at the Haiku OS ports system.
The system is very easy and quick to install as described in this link.
To find out what's in there, just go to /boot/home/haikuports/ and browse.
From what I can see, the only available binaries are in /boot/home/haikuports/trunk/haiku-apps/ which seem to contain all of the apps that are already installed on Haiku.
Everything else basically just consists of a text file (actually a .bep file) which outlines how to download the source, compile it and then install it.
I tried just two apps to see how easy, or otherwise, they were to compile and install. Both were games.
Actually, the first did contain a note in the .bep file saying that the status of the app in Haiku was "broken".
Nevertheless, I didn't succeed in compiling either of the apps I chose. And this was in spite of following, apparently successfully, instructions issued during the compile about means to avoid errors.
This is very far removed from the ports system of FreeBSD and you really have to work on the Haiku ports.
However, it does seem to be under very active development so, as with all things Haiku, it's worth keeping an eye on.

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