Limitations of Ports System

[Aryeh M. Friedman]

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Steven Kreuzer wrote:
> This thread was called "results of ports re-engineering survey" but
>  I figured I would start a new thread.
>
> On Dec 12, 2007, at 6:45 AM, Ade Lovett wrote:
>>
>>
>> We *know* it can be done better.  We *know* the scaling limits of
>>  the current system, and most of us are completely amazed it even
>>  still works.
>>
>> If y'all want to make a difference, concepts and ideas we have
>> plenty of.  Code talks.
>
> Out of curiosity, are any of these shortcomings documented
> anywhere? I have been using ports on my home machine for a long
> time and I've never had any problems with it. I assume the issues
> come into play when you work with multiple systems you are trying
> to keep in sync, etc.

Many of them are not documented... I use it at home and have run into
a number of issues (I don't want to restart the flame war that was the
previous thread please do a search of the lists for them)... they will
be better documented ASAP since enumerating them is part of the
re-engineering process I will be conducting (perhaps the last "public"
one) survey specifically focused on features people want and ones that
must not be eliminated.

Most of them boil down to the ports system was not designed to handle
the load it has and incorrectly assumed the following:

1. All maintainers while be extremely careful in how the specify
dependency requirements
2. That even though there would be metaports there would none of the
current "mega" metaports
3. Too much trust is placed by the system on the correctness of
individual ports

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