Port system "problems"

[Florent Peterschmitt]

On 26.06.2012 17:21, Jeremy Messenger wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 3:44 AM, Baptiste Daroussin<bapt at freebsd.org>  wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 10:34:00AM +0200, Marcus von Appen wrote:
>>> Matthew Seaman<m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk>:
>>>
>>>> On 26/06/2012 08:26, Marcus von Appen wrote:
>>>>>>> 1. Ports are not modular
>>>>>> What do you mean by modular? if you are speaking about subpackages it
>>>>>> is coming,
>>>>>> but it takes time
>>>>> I hope, we are not talking about some Debian-like approach here (foo-bin,
>>>>> foo-dev, foo-doc, ....).
>>>> Actually, yes -- that's pretty much exactly what we're talking about
>>>> here.  Why do you feel subpackages would be a bad thing?
>>> Because it makes installing ports more complex, causes maintainers to rip
>>> upstream installation routines apart, and burdens users with additional tasks
>>> to perform for what particular benefit (except saving some disk space)?
>>>
>>> If I want to do some development the Debian way, I would need to do the
>>> following:
>>>
>>> - install foo-bin (if it ships with binaries)
>>> - install foo-lib (libraries, etc.)
>>> - install foo-dev (headers, etc.)
>>> - install foo-doc (API docs)
>>>
>>> With the ports I am currently doing:
>>>
>>> - install foo
> I agree.
>
>> yes but you do not allow to install 2 packages one depending on mysql51 and one
>> depending on mysql55, there will be conflicts on dependency just because of
>> developpement files, the runtime can be made not to conflict.
>>
>> I trust maintainers to no abuse package splitting and do it when it make sense.
>>
>> In the case you give I would probably split the package that way:
>> foo (everything needed in runtime: bin + libraries)
>> foo-dev (everything needed for developper: headers, static libraries, pkg-config
>> stuff, libtool stuff, API docs)
>> foo-docs (all user documentation about the runtime)
>>
>> of course there will be no rule on how to split packages, just common sense.
> Disagree. We shouldn't split for that. Have you seen how many Linux
> users report when they can't compile one of application, just because
> they didn't install the *-dev? A LOT (thousands and thousands)! When
> it's A LOT then it means that it's flawed. If the upstream provide the
> split tarballs then I do not have any problem with it.
>
> Also, it will slow down the ports tree pretty bad if we do that way to
> all ports.
>
>> regards,
>> Bapt
>
Just don't make -dev package, that's really something stupid and I agree 
with that.