HEADSUP: INDEX[-5] files were removed from CVS.

Michael Nottebrock michaelnottebrock at gmx.net
Sun Nov 14 02:08:26 GMT 2004


Matthias Andree wrote:

> It's unfortunate that major changes are made without public consultation
> and then only halfway.

I don't believe that any bikeshedding on this list would have contributed any 
useful ideas except maybe "don't change anything", which has been considered 
as an option (but not pursued). FWIW, the change isn't so major at all. 
Instead of outdated indices from CVS, you now get no indices. The 'major' 
fallout if caused by portupgrade, but I haven't seen anybody complaining about 
portupgrade yet.

Setting PORTS_INDEX (in environment or pkgtools.conf) to some other value than 
portupgrade's default (PORTSDIR/INDEX) should avoid the constant rebuilding 
for portupgrade users, redefining INDEXFILE in make.conf to something 
different than INDEX or INDEX-5 should avoid it for non-portupgrade users.

Perhaps somebody can verify this so it can go into an UPDATING entry...

> "make fetchindex" runs on the order of a minute for my machine (1 Mbit/s
> link), but I'm definitely not using "make index" on my K6-2/300.
> 
> It's about time for a _fast_ index generator, or a cache so that only
> changed records are replaced.

I think one has been mentioned in this thread, but since it's written in perl, 
it's not a candidate for base-system inclusion...

> INDEX has been an annoyance ever since but
> no-one has a decent solution how ports can do without.

Perhaps the recent events will contribute to depart from the stalemate ports 
have been in, with no real development going on and portupgrade being 'good 
enough' for everybody. Perhaps it will just result in portupgrade stopping 
depending on INDEX to the extent as it does now, which will be 'good enough' 
again for most people.

-- 
    ,_,   | Michael Nottebrock               | lofi at freebsd.org
  (/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve     | http://www.freebsd.org
    \u/   | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org


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