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Title: Backport OpenBSD 7.3 pkg_add enhancement |
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Author: Solène |
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Date: 30 May 2023 |
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Tags: openbsd |
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Description: In this blog post, you will learn how to backport a huge |
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speedup to pkg_add for OpenBSD 7.3 |
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# Introduction |
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Recently, OpenBSD package manager received a huge speed boost when |
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updating packages, but it's currently only working in -current due to |
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an issue. |
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Fortunately, espie@ fixed it for the next release, I tried it and it's |
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safe to fix yourself. It will be available in the 7.4 release, but for |
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7.3 users, here is how to apply the change. |
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Link to the commit (GitHub) |
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# Fix |
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There is a single file modified, just download the patch and apply it |
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on `/usr/libdata/perl5/OpenBSD/PackageRepository/Installed.pm` with the |
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command `patch`. |
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```shell |
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cd /usr/libdata/perl5/OpenBSD/PackageRepository/ |
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ftp -o /tmp/pkg_add.patch https://github.com/openbsd/src/commit/fa222ab7fc13c11… |
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patch -C < /tmp/pkg_add.patch && patch < /tmp/pkg_add.patch && rm /tmp/pkg_add.… |
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``` |
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After that, running `pkg_add -u` should be at least 5 or 10 times |
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faster, and will use a lot less bandwidth. |
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# Some explanations |
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On -current, there is a single directory to look for packages, but on |
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release for architectures amd64, aarch64, sparc64 and i386, there are |
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two directories: the packages generated for the release, and the |
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packages-stable directory receiving updates during the release |
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lifetime. |
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The code wasn't working with the two paths case, preventing `pkg_add` |
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to build a local packages signature to compare the remote signature |
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database in the "quirks" package in order to look for updates. The old |
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behavior was still used, making pkg_add fetching the first dozen |
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kilobytes of each installed packages to compare their signature package |
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by package, while now everything is stored in quirks. |
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# Disclaimer |
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If you have any issue, just revert the patch by adding `-R` to the |
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patch command, and report the problem TO ME only. |
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This change is not officially supported for 7.3, so you are on your own |
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if there is an issue, but it's not harmful to do. If you were to have |
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an issue, reporting it to me would help solving it for 7.4 for |
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everyone, but really, it just work without being harmful in the worse |
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case scenario. |
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# Conclusion |
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I hope you will enjoy this change so you don't have to wait for 7.4. |
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This makes OpenBSD pkg_add feeling a bit more modern, compared to some |
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packages manager that are now almost instant to install/update |
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packages. |
