What's wrong with pkg over ftp ?

I'd rather ask what isn't wrong with FTP. It's one of the oldest protocols still (rarely) used, and it's full of unnecessary complexity and weirdness. Using two connections is just one of them...

For downloads only, a REALLY long time ago FTP was the way to go because HTTP often didn't use 8bit transfers and didn't support "range requests" yet, allowing to resume some download. Well, I'd say not any more for 10 to 15 years now.

For generic remote file access, you want something secure anyways (and just wrapping FTP in TLS doesn't fit the bill here because of that clumsy protocol design). There's SFTP instead working via SSH.
 
Subversion is not a protocol and I still prefer SVN over Git (license, user experience, quality of the community). That's not the point of this thread.
 
Alain De Vos said:
Can i say that ftp & svn are becoming old protocols and that http & git are the future ?
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For FTP, I would agree. In the last ~5 years, I've not seen any serious use of it in a professional setting, except for some ancient legacy systems that use it internally.

For Subversion: A lot of people still use it. And git is not the only alternative; in freeware distributed version control, Mercurial still has a large following (probably similar to Subversion). A lot of people actually still use CVS, and Perforce still has a very significant market share (in the part of the market where people pay to get a good and supported product). I know that even ClearCase (the old Atria/Rational/IBM product) still sells well enough to have a large support and development organization (I know some personally). Just looked it up: Perforce still has a paid staff of about 250 people. Personally, I no longer use git at all, neither personally (where I have switched to Mercurial, with occasional CVS) nor at work.

So, no git is not "the future"; it is just the most popular free source control system, with a lot of followers nipping at its heels.
 
FTP is bonkers as a protocol. I look forward to it being a "was".
 
I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, that's for sure. But keep in mind this is only the FTP support on pkg(8) that's likely to be removed. The FTP client and server that's included with the base OS isn't going anywhere. At least not any time soon.
 
FTP on the Internet should be discouraged. The server component should be removed from the base OS and be optionally installed (pkg/whatever) if required.
 
tux2bsd said:
FTP on the Internet should be discouraged.
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Completely agree. It's been years since I actually implemented FTP anywhere (clients or server).

tux2bsd said:
The server component should be removed from the base OS and be optionally installed (pkg/whatever) if required.
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People get really defensive when it comes to changes to the base OS. So I don't see this happening any time soon.
 
I don't mind a base OS to include many (smaller, traditional) tools that aren't used that often. There are quite a few examples, e.g. inetd(8) is rarely used, cu(1) probably as well, still I need both of them and I'm glad they stay in base.

FTP might have its "ad hoc" uses in some local network as well.

I do agree though it should be avoided on the internet today.
 
You just download them? For this, http is actually the simpler protocol (and still offers all the features necessary).

If you want full remote file access (and, of course, authentication), use SFTP. That's an entirely different (and sane) protocol.
 
What's going to be removed is FTP support from pkg. I don't think pkg ever supported SFTP, or maybe that's part of the SSH support (which will stay).
 
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