Reducing the size of the ports tree (brainstorm v2)

[Anton Shterenlikht]

I've been following this discussion with growing alarm.
A similarly elevated tone conversation led to dougb@
(the portmaster author) leaving the project a few years
back, when pkg was first introduced. I think the project
has lost as a result.

As a user, I see and appreciate the initiative and
strategic vision of some devs, but I also understand
the value of stability, incremental change and back-ported solutions.

Please let's find the way forward that does not alienate
too many people. I urge the developers advocating
significant changes not to dismiss user concerns.

poudriere is a good example. It is an excellent
tool that I on tier-2 systems.
However, it is wise that this, again excellent tool,
is optional.

>Mixing packages and ports is *not* supported and never has been. This is
>another cause of unnecessary bug reports.

I'm not sure what you mean here.
I've systems where I install 99% of packages
from official repo servers, and then rebuild
1% from ports where the default options are
no good for me. Is this not supported?
Or do you mean something else?

>
>The only "tweaking" you should be doing is changing port build options,
>and they'll be available via (sub)packages according to the current
>roadmap. Only in rare circumstances should you need to manually build
>ports.

sub-packages sounds like another big change.

So please give example of such circumstances.

Thanks

Anton