DragonFlyBSD 3.4 Coming Soon, Focuses On DPorts

The DragonFlyBSD 3.4 release is anticipated for release in mid-April and one of the features to this next BSD operating system update is the formation of DPorts, a derivative of the FreeBSD ports collection.

DPorts is DragonFly's derivative of FreeBSD Ports and will ultimately replace pkgsrc and the other pkg_* tools on the operating system. These older tools also reached an end-of-life state on FreeBSD.

The DragonFly ports are derived from the FreeBSD ports collection while incorporating DragonFly-specific patches and other modifications. More details on the DPorts work can be found from its Git repository.

Justin Sherrill expressed plans for DragonFly 3.4 that for new installations it should be possible to use either dports or pkgsrc dependening upon user preference. There should at least be x86_64/amd64 dports binaries available while there isn't yet any i386 packages, instructions on the DragonFlyBSD web-site about using dports, a binary build of pkgsrc-2013Q1, and other remaining features for this next release.

With FreeBSD ports going into a freeze today, and wanting to get out a release before the usual Google Summer of Code, Sherrill is thinking the DragonFlyBSD 3.4 release will likely happen around the 13th or 14th of April.

More details on the upcoming 3.4 release can be found via this kernel mailing list message.