ports/www is too full

[Robin Schoonover]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:14:26 -0400
Paul Chvostek <paul+fbsd at it.ca> wrote:
> 
> There are lots of ports that really truly belong in multiple
> categories; ftp/wget and ftp/curl are excellent HTTP clients,
> mail/rlytest verifies an element of an SMTP security policy, etc.  The
> problem is that having the port directory named for its "primary"
> category is just so damned convenient.
> 
> One solution might be to model the packages/ tree.  Store all ports in
> ports/All/, then have *all* the categories broken out as their own
> directories, with symlinks pointing back into ../All/portdir/.  Then
> you could have multiple symlinks, easily maintained by the meta info
> in ports/INDEX.
> 
> A single directory with 12000 subdirectories in it may be unruly ...
> and we'd have to fix oddities like hydra, jags, replay, etc ... but it
> would provide for the most flexible expansion, and the symlink tree
> would provide an equivalent interface to folks comfortable with the
> current setup.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 

Population.  cvs (and probably cvsup) do not handle symlinks well. You
would have to have a script populate symlinked ports into the categories
by hand.

-- 
Robin Schoonover (aka End)
# Just think -- blessed SCSI cables!  Do a big enough sacrifice and
# create a +5 blessed SCSI cable of connectivity.
#                -- Lionel Lauer