FreeBSD problems and preliminary ways to solve

[Marcin Wisnicki]

On Sun, 21 Aug 2011 21:05:21 +1000, Peter Jeremy wrote:

> On 2011-Aug-17 23:10:19 +0000, Vadim Goncharov <vadim_nuclight at mail.ru>
> wrote:
>>1) No pkg and pkg-devel versions. The -devel version is headers, static
>>   libs, programmer examples, etc. not needed in production (we could
>>   say this part is what is actually depended on in B-deps).
> 
> Xorg is partially broken up in this way.  In general, it is up to the
> ports' maintainers to do this - the FreeBSD project just hosts the ports
> infrastructure, it's up to maintainers to supply and maintain the actual
> ports.  Note that requiring both pkg and pkg-devel versions of ports
> significantly increases maintainer effort for little (to them) perceived
> value.  Also, I find having separate pkg and pkg-devel versions a real
> PITA - I regularly find that information i need is missing from the pkg
> file and I have to dig out the missing files.
> 
> Out of interest, what is the rationale behind this requirement.
>  

I too find lack of -devel packages as one of freebsd strengths not 
weaknesses.
Such separation is also very specific to certain languages like C/C++.

However to provide a middle-ground solution I once proposed installation 
filters based on patterns, which would give ability to not have unwanted 
files essentially for free (just small changes in pkg_* and ports/Mk).

For example there could be a standard filter group called "devel" that 
includes "include/**" and "lib/**.a".
Packages would have ability to exclude/include additional files to any 
group if needed using pkg-plist directives.
Similar patterns could be defined for docs, localizations, etc.
User would set which groups of files he wants to exclude during 
installation or after it.

Of course ideas don't write code :(