Port system "problems"

[Marcus von Appen]

Matthew Seaman <m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk>:

> On 26/06/2012 08:26, Marcus von Appen wrote:
>>>> 1. Ports are not modular
>
>>> What do you mean by modular? if you are speaking about subpackages it
>>> is coming,
>>> but it takes time
>
>> I hope, we are not talking about some Debian-like approach here (foo-bin,
>> foo-dev, foo-doc, ....).
>
> Actually, yes -- that's pretty much exactly what we're talking about
> here.  Why do you feel subpackages would be a bad thing?

Because it makes installing ports more complex, causes maintainers to rip
upstream installation routines apart, and burdens users with additional tasks
to perform for what particular benefit (except saving some disk space)?

If I want to do some development the Debian way, I would need to do the
following:

- install foo-bin (if it ships with binaries)
- install foo-lib (libraries, etc.)
- install foo-dev (headers, etc.)
- install foo-doc (API docs)

With the ports I am currently doing:

- install foo

What are the requirements, use cases and benefits for splitting up packages
in such a way?
How would it work with the ports infrastructure without making things more
complex for port maintainers and the different port installation scenarios, we
have?

Cheers
Marcus