Port system "problems"

[Jeremy Messenger]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 5:22 PM, Florent Peterschmitt
<fpeterscom at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm not a developer and I know how it's difficult to make a port (or some
> ports, for example VirtualBox) but I think the port system has many
> "problems":
>
> 1. Ports are not modular
> 2. Option system is not really well documented
> 3. Some dependencies are totally useless
> 4. So slow...
>
> Let me give some examples:
>
> 1. games/wesnoth should be splitted in games/wesnoth-bin and
> games/wesnoth-datas. Why rebuild everything when just binaries needs ?

It's pointless to split it when the datas have nothing to build (It
was last time I checked when I maintain it years ago). It doesn't take
long to install the datas. It will make sense to have the datas when
we have other ports that depend on it.

> 2. Why do we have to put WITH_NEW_XORG in /etc/make.conf to get it ? Why not
> put this var in a port configuration file which will be read by all ports
> needing this var ?

I am trying to figure out why it's hard to put the WITH_NEW_XORG in make.conf.

> 3. Why does GNOME really needs x11/yelp which depends on www/libxul, which
> is a big port to build ? I don't need yelp and I'm sure not to be alone
> don't need this.

The GNOME does need yelp when you go to the 'Help' menu. If I remove
the yelp then we WILL get a whine from you about that GNOME is broke
because the 'Help' menu doesn't work.

> 4. Generating Index, find dependencies. I know that we have time and that's
> not a priority, but it is slow.

Yes, it's slow because ports system isn't store in the database. You
can save your time by runs 'make fetchindex'.

BTW: I don't even use the INDEX, which it's 0 size and called
INDEX.dummy on my own. It's very useless anyway.

> I know that FreeBSD doesn't "change" because of "less surprising" philosophy
> (and I'm the first to say it's a good thing, but sometimes not so good), and
> also *BSD community is certainly less big than GNU community...
>
> Port system will have some major updates in the future ?

We do have new pkgng that is coming on its way and already available
for anyone to test with it. You can search for it.

BTW2: Please do use package or PC-BSD. The ports do not suit for you.
I am not kidding.


-- 
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FreeBSD GNOME Team
http://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome/ - gnome at FreeBSD.org