100s of xorg ports, will there be an xorg-base port?

[Michael Nottebrock]

On Saturday, 7. July 2007, Evren Yurtesen wrote:

> > Please explain what the problem is.  If you choose to install the xorg
> > metaport then the ports system will automatically fetch and install the
> > dependencies.  Exactly what aren't "most people" happy about?
>
> I guess it is mostly psychological but people do not tend to like a lot
> of ports installed with each app as usually this means more difficulties
> when upgrading etc. Maybe this is superficial but at the least it is
> discouraging people from using X with FreeBSD or upgrading to 7.2.
> People are not happy because of the simple reason that one has to
> install 300-400 more ports (especially without a possibilit to select
> what to not to install) to get X running nowadays.

I believe this is pretty much a non-issue. X.org hasn't really grown in 
complexity (at least as far as the end-user is concerned) or size just 
because the monolithic ports are no more. I am rather certain future X.org 
updates won't be nearly as involved, if at all, as the monolithic 6.9 -> 
modular 7.2 transition.

Also I suspect you underestimate the problems a stripped down installation of 
X.org can bring on machines running the actual server, which seems to the 
kind of installations you have in mind. X.org is not very good yet at telling 
exactly what is missing if some particular feature/extension or driver the 
user wants happens not to be installed, neither are most users familiar 
enough with X to make a well-informed decision what components they really 
want when faced with an options menu.

Augmenting X.org with some sort of plug'n'play front-end for hardware 
detection and automatic driver installation therefore might be a worthwhile 
project, but it's probably outside the scope of a port Makefile.

-- 
   ,_,   | Michael Nottebrock               | lofi at freebsd.org
 (/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve     | http://www.freebsd.org
   \u/   | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org
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