What I learned from porting my projects to FreeBSD

Introduction

I set up a local FreeBSD VirtualBox VM to test something, and it seems to work very well. Due to the novelty factor, I decided to get my software projects to build and pass the tests there.

The Projects

https://github.com/shlomif/shlomif-computer-settings/ (my dotfiles).
https://web-cpan.shlomifish.org/latemp/
https://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/
https://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/black-hole-solitaire-solver/
https://better-scm.shlomifish.org/source/
http://perl-begin.org/source/
https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/site-source/
Written using a mix of C, Perl 5, Python, Ruby, GNU Bash, XML, CMake, XSLT, XHTML5, XHTML1.1, Website META Language, JavaScript and more.
Work fine on several Linux distributions and have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_CI using Ubuntu 14.04 hosts
Some pass builds and tests on AppVeyor/Win64

What I Learned:

FreeBSD on VBox has become very reliable

Survived a host power interruption - https://twitter.com/shlomif/status/1048852791987527680 .
I recall that some years back, rebooting with X running (because input was not enabled) has FUBARed the /etc directory prompting a reinstall, so freebsd on vbox has come a long way.

Some executables on FreeBSD are in /usr/local/bin instead of /usr/bin

On Linux they are almost always in /usr/bin/ only:

script to fix the perl shebang line
/usr/bin/env is your friend.
man hier(7) explains the difference.

make on FreeBSD is not GNU make

One can call gmake
No gmake on Debian/Ubuntu/etc.

Solution for Debian:

mkdir -p ~/bin
ln -sf /usr/bin/make ~/bin/gmake
export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"

m4 on FreeBSD is not compatible with GNU m4

Fixed in this commit by first checking for gm4 and then falling back on plain m4.

Some CPAN Modules fail to install using local-lib there

No idea why.
Sometimes cpanm -n ("no test") helps.
pkg install -y p5-Foo-Bar as root for other times.

DocBook/XSL Does Not Live Under /usr/share/sgml

Fixed using a symlink on the freebsd system.
Unhappy with this solution.

FreeBSD’s grep does not have a "-P" flag by default

"-P" is not in POSIX grep

Solution:

-        ) | grep -vP '^<\?xml ver' \
+        ) | perl -p -0777 -e 's%\A<\?xml ver[^>]*>%%' \

Does not exactly do the same operation, but even more correct.
Perl is portable shell

— Guy Keren

FreeBSD has no "nproc" command

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/108821/number-of-cores-on-freebsd
nproc(1) is available in FreeBSD as of 13.2-RELEASE. ( Reference. )
Added a small shell executable under ~/bin/nproc .

What still does not work:

Valgrind tests fail - possibly due to this bug
Spellchecking tests fail, like on Ubuntu, as it seems hunspell has system-dependent dictionaries. (Workaround: export SKIP_SPELL_CHECK=",en,".)

Conclusion:

It is easier to port a shell than a shell script.

— Larry Wall

I ran into some cases where my scriptology was lacking and suboptimal, even for my own personal use, and fixed them.

Coverage:

On the /r/freebsd subreddit - with some discussion
Hacker News comments - with a lot of discussion, including some with technical insights.

shlomif/what-i-learned-from-porting-to-freebsd

shlomif

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