ports structure and improvement suggestions

[Serge Gagnon]

>>>>> On Wed, 10 May 2006, "martinko" == martinko wrote:
...

  martinko> yes, you're right. it's not so difficult. but only if you talk
  martinko> about one port. now imagine a few more of them. and things get
  martinko> worse.. another example -- a few days ago i deleted all the
  martinko> installed packages and started from scratch. mind you right now
  martinko> i've got 375 packages. that's quite a lot. but i can imagine
  martinko> many people have even more. now imagine how you're going to
  martinko> configure them all. with options you're asked once, you cannot
  martinko> miss them and they saved for later use. and they're especially
  martinko> useful when a port has many dependencies. not speaking of
  martinko> metaports. and, as already said, portupgrade doesn't handle this
  martinko> very well. also editing makefile in conditional way is not good.

Just my point of view but, you don't have know or set all the dependency's 
KNOB. Eg: print/apsfilter need shells/bash for its own purpose. If you're 
not running this shell as login shell, you don't want to know or set to 
build it static or not.
I think that it can be fastidious to set all these options the first time 
you're building your ports.
As an exemple, imagine you're installing your ports tree for the first time 
and then go to x11/kde !!

Secondo, I think that most of the users know approximatly what this or that 
port do and if they have to modify their build with WITH/WITHOUT or not.
Just my point of view again.

However, if such a system will be put in place, I think that the idea of 
asking the user once and at the beginning of the build processe is a good 
one. I like to start a big build then go to sleep and not thinking that my 
station is, perhaps, asking me something or not.

I'm just scared about the fact that I can't imagine myself answering a 
listing of one miles long before building a port even if it's just one time 
at the beginning and that these options will be saved. And asking again to 
this same listing if I want to change these options.

However, I saw something on this thread that it could be very cool. The 
idea of one file that contain these option like
shells/rc:WITH_READLINE
...
Very good idea if i'm not forced to fill this file with a system like I 
described above. Using vi is cool !

IMHO, if you're not able to read a man page and use vi to modify this file 
who contains the information concerning your port, you build your port as 
they are with their default setting, that's all.
-- 
GAGNON serge <serge.gagnon at b2b2c.ca>
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