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.



More information about the freebsd-ports mailing list