XPI infrastructure needs some love

[Doug Barton]

On 09/07/2010 01:20 PM, Lapo Luchini wrote:
> Doug Barton wrote:
>
>> For those that we are simply
>> repackaging, what's the value in doing that, vs. simply allowing
>> users to download them from mozilla's site?
>
> Well, in vastly multi-user places there might of course be good reasons
> to have a single centralized package instead of
> one-for-each-user-account, but OTOH... places like that are not much
> more used in this a-few-PCs-per-household world we currently live in.

I maintain my own archive for my personal platforms (multibooting 
different OS', re-installing not-infrequently) because it makes it 
easier to keep things consistent, amongst other reasons. For the purpose 
you describe FreeBSD packages are neither useful nor desirable since the 
individual user still has to install the thing.

> Still, I feel that as a *somewhat cleaner* choice and go to the extent
> of creating a port for every extension I do use (on my single-user
> machines), but I'm not quite sure I'd be able to justify that with real
> arguments other than a warm fuzzy feeling. ;)

My concern with this for some time is that there is little to no actual 
benefit for the vast majority of these ports, however they do consume 
resources. Admittedly not an overwhelming number of resources, but given 
the fact that ports/package resources are stretched thin, and we'd like 
to expand support for packages going forward, I think we need to 
carefully evaluate these choices, especially given that we're losing 
maintainers. As a quick overview I did a find for ports with xpi in the 
name and there are well over 100. That doesn't include other ports with 
different naming conventions.

My suggestion is that we simply eliminate these ports altogether, but I 
realize that's not likely to happen. :)


Doug

-- 

	... and that's just a little bit of history repeating.
			-- Propellerheads

	Improve the effectiveness of your Internet presence with
	a domain name makeover!    http://SupersetSolutions.com/