Why does everybody switch to dynamic plists?
Kirill Ponomarew
krion at voodoo.oberon.net
Fri Jan 21 12:35:47 PST 2005
On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 08:52:02PM +0100, Alexander Leidinger wrote:
> can someone please tell me why people enjoy to use dynamic plists, even
> when there was a static plist already?
>
> With a dynamic plist:
> - We lose the ability to search for files which aren't installed.
> (useful for users)
> - We lose the ability to determine if a particular port contains what
> we search.
> (useful for users)
> - We lose the ability to check just with grep if two ports install
> conflicting files (in case we get a report of a conflict it's very
> nice to not need to install a port to verify the conflict).
> (useful for users and port developers)
> - We lose the ability to use portlint to check the plist (if the
> maintainer checks the generated one he just can use a static plist).
> BTW.: Does portlint know how to check the embedded plist (the
> Makefile variables)?
> (useful for port developers)
> - We lose the ability to maybe answer support requests without the need
> to install the software.
> (useful for "the frontliners")
> + We don't need to take care if the plist changes.
> (useful for port developers)
>
> I count 1 positive and 5 negative aspects.
>
> If the developer of a port puts the dynamic plist generation into a
> Makefile target instead of inlining it into the build/install process,
> he doesn't needs to put alot more effort into the development process
> (just one "make <generate-the-plist-target>") and gets the benefits of
> static plists too.
>
> Maybe I've overlooked something, but so far I haven't seen a dynamic
> plist which needs to be a dynamic one. So I think at least 99% of our
> dynamic plists don't need to be dynamic.
Just from my experience - dynamic plists are evil.
-Kirill
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