Call for feedback on a Ports-collection change

[Bakul Shah]

Why not add something to bsd.ports.mk so that all you need is
a single Makefile per port.  For example,

    make

should not only fetch the distfiles but also a tar.gz of the
bits for that particular port, unpack everything, verify
bits, patch, configure and build.  You can go one step
further where only the INDEX file is needed!  As an example,

    make PORT=www/links

should fetch www/links and run make in it.  This way you have
the normal ports tree but populated with only the things you
are actually using so the number of inodes in use is not a
big issue (unless you have all of the 9K+ ports installed)!

There are other things worth considering if you are upgrading
the ports infrastructure (independent of worrying about what
builds and what doesn't and what PRs need to be closed).

- it should be possible to automatically cache make options
  used for subsequent package upgrades.

- a lot of portupgrade functionality should be subsumed by
  make + some helper program, preferably written in C or C++ or
  perl.  make deinstall reinstall is rather clunky!  I want
  to be able to say, for example,

    cd /usr/ports/www/links
    make upgrade

  and have links updated.  I want to be able to say

    cd /usr/ports
    make upgrade

  and have all the installed ports upgraded.