NetBSD package branches

bsduck

Hello,

I had a look a the available package branches at http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/amd64/ and I'm not sure I understood them right. Correct me if I'm wrong.

It looks like both /9.0/ and /9.1/ are the exact same thing than /9.0_2021Q1/, so I assume they are links to the latest available quarterly branch and will switch to /9.0_2021Q2/ when it's out.

This would also mean that packages are the same for both 9.0 and 9.1 and one can use /9.0_current/ on a 9.1 system? It's somewhat confusing to replace /9.1/ with /9.0_current/ in order to get newer packages!

bsduck It looks like both /9.0/ and /9.1/ are the exact same thing than /9.0_2021Q1/

Well, yes. Both 9.0 and 9.1 are a symlink to 9.0_2021Q1

bsduck I assume they are links to the latest available quarterly branch and will switch to /9.0_2021Q2/ when it's out.

Yes, @nia does the switch

bsduck This would also mean that packages are the same for both 9.0 and 9.1 and one can use /9.0_current/ on a 9.1 system?

Yes, correct.

neubaer

pin How's the ABI compatibility between minor releases (9.0 and 9.1 in this case) in practice?

I'm asking because I had pkgin complain about it for some packages (lsof comes to mind), and I had to configure it to ignore the ABI check to install them.

I haven't noticed any visible problems, but it would be nice to know for sure.

neubaer They are fully compatible within a major release and safe to ignore.
You can set the following inside /usr/pkg/etc/pkg_install.conf to avoid the warnings.

CHECK_OSABI=no                                                                                                                                                   
CHECK_OS_VERSION=no

EDIT: Or you could just remember to clean-up /var/db/pkgin/pkg_install-err.logwhen it get's too large, if you can stand the warnings 😉

neubaer

pin They are not warnings. The packages don't get installed unless I set CHECK_OSABI=no in the config.

neubaer I see, I only get warnings, they install anyway, NetBSD-9.99.82 with May 2 kernel.

neubaer

pin I can reproduce it on 9.1 RELEASE and today's STABLE, with 2021Q1 pkgsrc binaries. I tried reproducing it with CURRENT as well, but sysupgrade screwed the upgrade a bit so it's not representative (I wonder if that's today's CURRENT being screwed up, or if it's a jump too far for sysupgrade).

nia

Nothing's too far for sysupgrade unless you screw up the etcupdate stage.

neubaer

nia etcupdate stage didn't run at all because some of the basic utilities started coredumping. Which is why I said it's maybe a jump too far to upgrade from a live system, as opposed to something like an offline upgrade from an ISO that can hold itself together.

nia

neubaer That happens if you have a newer userspace than your kernel. sysupgrade is easy to use safely, you just have to update the kernel and modules, reboot, then update the rest of the system.

neubaer

nia Right. I did the upgrade manually as you said and it works.

For reference:

sysupgrade fetch && sysupgrade modules && sysupgrade kernel
shutdown -r now
# REBOOT
sysupgrade sets && sysupgrade etcupdate && sysupgrade postinstall
shutdown -r now

So if I understand it right, the above is preferable for CURRENT, but sysupgrade auto should still do the job for STABLE because the kernel <-> userspace ABI is kept compatible, right?