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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