ports/78944: htdig depends on a very specific apache

[Mark Linimon]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005, Florian Hars wrote:

> I tried to install the package, and it did indeed require this and
> only this version of apache, although it doesn't even need any
> apache at all.
> This is a serious design error of the ports/packages system.

No, this is an error in an individual port.  Please contact the
maintainer to ask why the dependency is there.  If the maintainer
does not reply, please file a PR about it.

> And it will still download and try to install any packages it
> erroneously thinks it depends on.

Per design.  It is doing exactly what it has been told to do.

> Unlike FreeBSD, package management on debian mostly works, so the
> suggestion is far from useless.

I'm sure Debian, like FreeBSD, has individual packages with bugs.
I assume that in both systems problems only get fixed if they are
reported to the maintainers or, if that fails, through some kind of
bug-reporting system.  I doubt Debian bugs get fixed by posting to
a mailing list saying that package management is completely broken,
either.

Hundreds of people use the FreeBSD packages.  If they were as broken
as you were making them out to be, we would have 8000 PRs, not 800, and
a flood of email messages.  Instead we have reports about individual
errors, which we attempt to fix.

mcl