Re: git: cf75f452e94a - main - sysutils/conky: Update to 1.14.0

On 14/10/22 17:18, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 05:01:46PM +0200, Guido Falsi wrote:
>> ...
>> Also, this is happening more and more. I think it is a lost battle. The
>> rest of the world builds things using CI environments and similar
>> things, and does not care for heavy dependencies, since it's not their
>> problem to build them. We will see projects pulling in unconditional
>> heavy dependencies with increasing frequency in the future (see rust,
>> for the most evident example). Fighting it in the ports tree is wasted
>> energy in my opinion
> 
> I'd have to disagree here.  Upstream's ignorance (or access to a lot of
> free energy and beefy machines) is a bad excuse for us as downstream
> packagers to force the same shit to our users.  I can't afford nor would
> I want to waste my time building something like Rust and even WebKit, so
> always disable those in my ports or at least make them optional.
> 

Generic theoretical part (about which I have nothing more to add):

When possible and easy without disabling major functionality yes. If the 
requirement is a strict one, on which much of the software functionality 
depends it makes little sense to create such a knob.

I am not against making things optional in the port when there already 
is a knob from upstream, or adding such a knob is easy and does not 
cripple the software.

On the other hand if there is no knob already and creating one would 
require major development and/or cripple the software the knob would 
make no sense at all.



More practical part (conky case):

Upstream now uses pandoc to generate the software man page. I did not 
even know pandoc existed up to yesterday. I am definitely unable to cook 
up a substitute.

In the ports tree man pages are not part of DOCS, but a base component 
of a port, so I can't wrap the man page generation in the DOCS knob.

Any suggestions?

Adding a pre-generated man page to the port? Not sure it's a good idea, 
I should check that hte man page gets generated the same on every 
release at least, and I'm sure at some point in the future I'll end up 
upgrading the port and forgetting to update the pre-generated man page.


> People often prefer FreeBSD because of our huge and flexible software
> collection.  If they can't tune things down, we lose a selling point
> as they can simply run flatpak/snap package on GNU/Linux distribution
> of their choice.  I'd rather see them use FreeBSD and enjoy our saner
> dependencies (plus reduced carbon emission).

I understand and agree, but FreeBSD does not exist in a void. The rest 
of the world is moving on. Our resources are limited. Refusing or 
resisting modern tools and techniques is wasted energy.

For example one thing that annoys the hell out of me is seeing every 
software grow a dependency on some HTML5+js+multimedia rendering engine, 
often for very small gains. I will not be surprised the day something 
like less or ls will grow such a dependency. But I don't have time or 
resources to fight this. I do have time or resources to cope with the 
consequences though.

-- 
Guido Falsi <madpilot@FreeBSD.org>