java/eclipse and jdk1.6

[Greg Lewis]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 08:06:07PM -0600, Mark Linimon wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 11:12:03AM -0800, Greg Lewis wrote:
> > A good argument for this is that it has lead to things like the Eclipse
> > plugin for PHP (insert any language other than Java) being in the java
> > category.  Thats just plain ridiculous in my view.
> 
> My own feeling is that the 'java' physical category has not been a success.
> People are too confused about where to put things.  It's the only language-
> specific physical category we have.

Agreed.  Its a mess.  Stuff ends up in there just because its written in
Java.  Other equivalent ports (which may or may not be written in Java)
end up in other categories.  I wouldn't be sad to see it go.  We could
easily do something like have it as a virtual category ala perl, etc.
and possibly also prefix port names with java- if people thought that was
a good idea.

> As for how/what on creating a new physical category, see
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/ports.html#AEN1529
> (it will also refer you to the relevant section of the Porter's Handbook).
> 
> I think it's a fairly easy call to have 'eclipse' created as a virtual
> category.  There was a proposal a year or so ago to create some kind of
> 'ide' physical category for Integrated Development Environments of
> various kinds, but it quickly resulted in more controversy than anything
> else.  (IIRC I was against it at the time.)  I'd want to see a complete
> proposed list before we went in that direction.

I don't believe a physical category is warranted, but I agree that a
virtual category is pretty much a given if it were to move (or even if
it didn't that makes some sense).

> Mass category moves are stressful for our users IMHO, so we should only
> use them if we really feel the hierarchy will be in much better shape
> going forwards.

So thats the big question.  If we leave the category there it will continue
to gather new ports despite our best intentions for what we want people to
commit there.  We know that this will cause confusion since it leaves users
unsure of where they should look for certain ports.  Do we think that level
of confusion is a greater pain than the pain of gutting the category
(either over time or in one hit).

-- 
Greg Lewis                          Email   : glewis at eyesbeyond.com
Eyes Beyond                         Web     : http://www.eyesbeyond.com
Information Technology              FreeBSD : glewis at FreeBSD.org