ports structure and improvement suggestions
Sideris Michael
msid at daemons.gr
Tue May 9 10:37:30 UTC 2006
On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 07:46:06PM -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
> On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 12:23:19AM +0300, Sideris Michael wrote:
> > On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 02:14:02PM -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
> > > On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 10:23:26PM +0200, Pav Lucistnik wrote:
> > > > Sideris Michael p??e v po 08. 05. 2006 v 23:09 +0300:
> > > >
> > >
> > > This is likely to start a flame war, or at least a spit-ball
> > > fight. I hope not.... Some months ago after using RedHat's
> > > update stuff, a few people seemed a bit upset at my enthusiasm.
> > > Since then RH got greedy and stopped their free or cheapware
> > > approach and I eventually found the next best altrnative to
> > > FBSD: Ubuntu. Among their ``idiotware'' apps is a GUI front end
> > > to their apt-get stuff. In 11 months of use, I've managened to
> > > keep 2 Ubuntu systems current with a few mouseclicks a month.
> > >
> > > Nutshell, is there a way of using this approach? If not,
> > > is there a way of perl- or /bin/sh- or /bin/ch- bundling
> > > portupgrade with pkgdb, and other upgrade programs to get
> > > something more rational working? Most of the times that
> > > portupgrade screws up, it is due to a build failure. Sometimes
> > > it's easy to figure out why the build failed; when it is a
> > > ./configure snafu, it's always hours of time backtracing.
> > > Time N failed builds. ...Too much.
> >
> > The problems here are really two. Decide a standard way for configuring ports and
> > include in the base system a tool that will upgrade the installed ports. Both of
> > them are easy to achieve. Having in mind always that there are people in the mood
> > to improve things. Bored and irresponsible people should be vanished in my opinion
> > cause they are a cancer for a project like FreeBSD. And it is really sad to hear
> > that the port maintainers are bored to modify the Makefiles. And it even more awful
> > to hear that even if the current Makefiles are modified, there is no way to ensure
> > this for future ports. Unacceptable.
>
>
> Yeah. I'm at least as guilty as anyone because I have four or
> five ports under my name--2 I wrote. Since then life has
> done some trips on me, I've forgotten the How-to's of creating
> or updating a port. So my latest fixes have sat here for
> 2,3 years. ((I've got small programs that might be useful to
> some people, but don't share because the porting is a bear....
> that's a side-bar.))
I didn't accuse anyone and I don't intend to do so. But I don't understand why
people abandon everything. And even worse, they refuse new ideas for improvements.
I know it may be complicated or whatever. But do you like the current chaotic
situation? I am just pointning out a problem and you(in general) try to burry it.
> One important q is why aren't packages more widely used?
> I have to have at least 5.4 or 5.5 to fetch any pkg. I love
> src, but less when it takes hours to download over my ISDN
> wire and days to build, say OO. Or firefox. If I want to
> see how person X did some function y(), I can grab the source.
Well, as I have already mentioned, packages are outdated, unfortunately. And even worse,
they are not available for all versions of FreeBSD.
> Suggest that, rather than having endless debates about which
> should be the standard method of confguration, people make
> pro/con lists and present their conclusions. Re modifying
> the makefiles, can this be done largely by script?
No problem by me. Wanna focus on packages. Do so. But do it effectively. Once again,
there is no debate. I am just throwing ideas around.
Sideris Michael.
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