washbear

This is not the reason. We created this branch in July 2025 (GCC 12.5 was released on 11 July, 2025) and spent a year stabilizing it. A new system compiler is considered far too much of a risky, incompatible change to backport. Especially since lots of C code no longer compiles with GCC 14+ without significant changes.

Each time we upgrade the system compiler, it requires extensive work to keep all of our supported architectures in working order, and adjust our code for compatibility.

This is partly the reason, the other reason is that we created this branch in July 2025 (GCC 12.5 was released on 11 July, 2025) and spent a year stabilizing it. A new system compiler is considered far too much of a risky, incompatible change to backport. Especially since lots of C code no longer compiles with GCC 14+ without significant changes.

People get "POSIX compliance" confused with "Unix certification". The first is an API you implement, the second is a rubber stamp.

All active Unix-like operating systems aim to implement the new interfaces as they're defined.

This is part of the contract all new committers are required to sign. Becoming a NetBSD committer requires membership of the NetBSD Foundation and there's an understanding that trust is expected.

The article is wrong, it has branding disabled (so it identifies as Nightly), but it's stable Firefox. And the linked article indicates that one compositor can be used.

Not true; we have podman

I wonder if there's a PDF reader that can render to sixel graphics - mlterm-wscons can display sixels.

It's "big in Japan". Used on many ISP routers there, for example Internet Initiative Japan's "SEIL" family, as well as most workstations in a few Japanese universities.

pkgsrc enjoys mild popularity in the scientific computing community, a lot of NetBSD use is probably in education - Cambridge University uses it for their thin clients too.

This is exactly the type of hardware where NetBSD shines - it's often best to install it on something from a few years ago where driver support has matured to a fine vintage. Very good OS for preventing old hardware from being binned.

> I may have some useful hardware sitting around here at the house. Some of it may be 20 years old. How can I tell whether any of it will be useful to this project?

NetBSD developer hat on

It will likely be very useful, martin would particularly like CardBus and PCMCIA hardware, though he's kind of overwhelmed by requests right now.

If you can find some way to get the chipset identifier (maybe check dmesg, usbdevs/pcidevs if your operating system provides such a command), that's the useful information that he needs.

> Why are you comparing pkgsrc to pacman.

The original commented suggested that XBPS was similar to pkgsrc. I suggested that XBPS has far more in common with Arch Linux's package manager than pkgsrc or anything else in the BSD world. As you yourself note in your next paragraph...

> Your comments do not sound like those of a daily NetBSD user.

I have commit access. Since three years ago. My name is on the latest release announcement.

You prick.

Actual package recipes. BSD-style packaging systems are written in BSD make using a mk/ framework rather than Arch-style shell scripts. If a package already exists for FreeBSD Ports I would check that first because it's much more similar to what I'm used to.

Fundamentally pkgsrc is built on very low level tools, awk, shell, make, cwrappers, and pkg_install, although you can manage it with high-level ones (obviously pkgin is there, but there's also a lot of other third-party tooling).