ports structure and improvement suggestions
martinko
martinkov at pobox.sk
Wed May 10 21:49:29 UTC 2006
Serge Gagnon wrote:
>
>>>>>> 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.
yes, you're basically right. fiddling with too many options at one time
scares me, too. :)
on the other hand, it's not that users wouldn't know what their ports
are about. it's that they wouldn't know of switches that might be
available for them. and no, i wouldn't agree with "if you don't know
about it, you don't need it". ;-)
>
> 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.
you always can define a batch mode and you won't be prompted, defaults
will be used.
>
> 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.
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