XPI infrastructure needs some love

[Dominic Fandrey]

On 08/09/2010 07:00, Rob Farmer wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 21:32, Doug Barton <dougb at freebsd.org> wrote:
>> On 09/07/2010 09:09 PM, Rob Farmer wrote:
>>>
>>> Around 6 months ago, a similar thing was proposed for a number of
>>> eclipse plugins - they can all be installed and updated via the
>>> builtin update manager and nothing is built for FreeBSD - they are
>>> just Java stuff that can be binary downloaded and run anywhere.
>>
>> Are these eclipse plugins similar to mozilla plugins in that the user has to
>> take an additional step after the FreeBSD package is added, or if the
>> package is on the system then it's available to all the users immediately?
>>  If the latter, then I can understand why having FreeBSD packages of them
>> would be valuable. If they are similar to mozilla plugins then I'm curious
>> what the value-add is.
> 
> I'm not quite sure what you mean by "take an additional step after the
> FreeBSD package is added." I've never used either the xpi ports or the
> eclipse plugins.
> 
> Do users have to run some command to import the plugins into their
> ~/.mozilla profiles after root installs them or is it automatic?
> Skimming a couple makefiles, neither the xpi nor eclipse plugin ports
> indicate this type of thing in a pkg-message or similar that I can
> see.

No, it's not necessary. Only the enigmail ports are exceptions, but
I'm repeating what a lot of people said before.

> I don't really have much of an opinion on this - I can see the pros
> (easier administration) and cons (more ports to be maintained,
> possiblity of lagging behind what's available upstream) to having the
> ports. I just recall the discussion and mentioned it because I thought
> it might be relevant if there was already some precedent for this type
> of thing (it seems the eclispe ports were kept).

I'm a supporter of the keep it in ports idea. All these auto-updating
mechanisms are workarounds for operating systems that lack a
centralized update mechanism (Windows, OS-X).

I dread the day when I update all my ports and still have to update
my Firefox, Thunderbird, Eclipse, ... plugins afterwards.

I pitty the sysadmin who updates a system and sends a mail to
every account owner from first-level support to CEO, to please
update all their plugins for all their software, because the
infrastructure to do it all in one go is gone.

I understand, FreeBSD is rarely used in this fashion (as a
server with thin-clients), but by removing these kinds of ports
we cut off any growth potential in this direction and I very
much want FreeBSD to prosper and grow.

This OS has a lot of faults and there is a lot of catching up to
do in many areas.
There's lack of manpower for a lot of the ungrateful jobs like
3D support (where frankly no one will be ever satisfied, because
it will still run better under Windows).

But, this system has so much potential and makes my life so much
more easy, because there's a lot of stuff that FreeBSD _does_
better than other systems and there is a spirit of pragmatism that
makes this community deal with stuff and move on to the next
problem.

So what I am trying to say - FreeBSD is worth all the effort we
do and can give it. Because this is the place where people come
up with /better/ solutions.

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