Has the port collection become to large to handle.

[Garance A Drosihn]

At 2:28 PM -0400 5/13/06, fbsd wrote:
>To all question list readers;
>
>Now with 14576 ports in the collection where do you
>draw the line that its too large to be downloading
>the whole collection when you just use 10 or 20 of
>them?

This is a good question.  For all those people who want
to roll their eyes and ignore this question, please
answer it.  Where *DO* you draw the line?  Obviously it's
not at 10,000 ports.  Will it be 20,000?  50,000?  How
many programs exist?  Will every single program known to
man eventually be in the ports collection?  How hopeless
is that?  And if not, then "Where do you draw the line?".

>What are your thoughts about requesting the ports
>group to create a new category containing just the
>ports most commonly used including their dependents
>and making this general category the default used
>to download.

Unfortunately, this is the wrong solution.  I'm sure
you will love this *IFF* (that means "if and ONLY if")
all of *YOUR* ports are in that category of important
ports.  We have 15,000 ports because every single one
of those ports has some users who think that specific
port is important.  While I'm sure that some ports
will be willing to be in the "second tier" category,
I suspect you'll still have thousands of ports with
hundreds of thousands of users who will be personally
insulted if <someBastard> refused to include their
favorite port in the "important" category.  I doubt
you will find anyone who wants to volunteer for the
role of <someBastard>, because that is certainly the
only name which will be used to describe whoever
chooses which ports are in the special category.

We need some more dramatic restructuring of ports to
really solve the issue.  Your suggestion is a very
small bandaid, and will just result in more fighting
and ill-will instead of solving anything.

All of this is just my opinion, of course.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu