Pare Down Dependencies from Gnome

[Jason C. Wells]

Tom McLaughlin wrote:

> (If someone is looking for something to do, trying working out an easy
> way to handle all three versions of Kerberos in a uniform way within the
> ports tree and avoids the hassles people often run into when using
> versions from the ports tree.)

This is a specific case of a more general problem.  Try to work out an 
easy way to handle port dependencies when disparate versions, 
configurations, and implementations of a particular library or protocol 
exist and have many to many relationships to independent ports 
throughout the ports tree.  These relationships must maintain 
consistency automagically without communication between various port 
maintainers and users.

I'll have the solution to you in 23 minutes. :)

It seems that the ports system might make use of a substitution matrix 
for those ports/libraries/chunks of base.  Such a system might have an 
primary attribute called an interface.  The interface might have one or 
more implementations (e.g.  MIT Kerberos, Heimdal, or perhaps 
perl-5.8.[5,6,7,8,foo]-[threaded]).  An interface might be a library, 
service, or protocol.  A potential port would get check if the interface 
existed on a system.  Leave the port ignorant about the implementation 
specifics of a particular interface.

Did I mention that I am not a hacker?  What I am proposing is to add a 
level of indirection to the ports system.  Don't depend on a port. 
Depend on an interface.

Later,
Jason C. Wells