Reducing the size of the ports tree (brainstorm v2)

Fri Nov 7 19:05:31 UTC 2014

On Fri, 7 Nov 2014 19:32:25 +0100 Bartek Rutkowski <robak at freebsd.org> wrote

> On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 6:47 PM, Chris H <bsd-lists at bsdforge.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 7 Nov 2014 09:08:28 +0000 Bartek Rutkowski <robak at freebsd.org>
> > wrote >
> >> On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 6:56 PM, Baptiste Daroussin <bapt at freebsd.org>
> >> wrote: > Hi all,
> >> >
> >> > tijl@ spotted an interesting point, distinfo and pkg-descr files files
> >> > convenient are taking a lot of space for "free", we can reduce the size
> >> > of the while ports tree by a factor 2 by simply merging them into one of
> >> > the other files (Makefile and/or pkg-plist) from my testing it really
> >> > devides significantly the size of the tree.
> >> >
> >> > Problem is how to merge them if we want to.
> >> >
> >> > What we do not want to loose:
> >> > - Easyness of parsing distinfo
> >> > - Easyness to get informations about the description
> >> >
> >> > so far I have not been able to figure out a user friendly way
> >> >
> >> > Ideas I got so far only concerns pkg-descr:
> >> > Adding an entry in the Makefile for the WWW:
> >> > WWW= bla
> >> > or an entry in the plist: @www http...
> >> >
> >> > for the description the Makefile is not suitable as multi line entry in
> >> > Makefiles are painful
> >> > Maybe a new keyword:
> >> > @descr <<EOD
> >> > mydesc
> >> > in
> >> > multiline
> >> > EOD
> >> >
> >> > which could easily be added to the plist parser in pkg. But I'm do not
> >> > find that very friendly in particular for make(1) to extract the data.
> >> >
> >> > Concerning the distinfo I have no idea.
> >> >
> >> > so this mail is a call of ideas :), if nothing nice ideas is found we
> >> > will just do nothing here :)
> >> >
> >> > regards,
> >> > Bapt
> >>
> >> At first I liked the idea, since I was wondering on my own if
> >> pkg-descr and distinfo couldnt be simply part of the Makefile. In vast
> >> majority of cases that would look good and wouldnt introduce too much
> >> content into existing Makefiles. There are ports like www/nginx or
> >> www/tengine that have enourmous distinfo files with number of entries
> >> that would ruin readability of their Makefiles, but so far I havent
> >> seen too many of these so I suppose they'd be the liveable drawbacks
> >> of new approach.
> >>
> >> However, after reading this discussion and some more tinkering about
> >> the idea I changed my mind - if the goal of current pkg&ports
> >> activities is to make the pkg the default way of installing packages
> >> and 'deprecate' ports when that happens,
> > Aak! Seriously?! Eliminate ports? I _sincerely_ hope that isn't the
> > intended result of the introduction of pkg(8). That would be a
> > _horrible_ decision. For more reasons than I can list in a mailing
> > list reply. Honestly. If this is true, has any real thought gone into
> > the potential consequences resulting from this? We're not just talking
> > about the affects on "geeks", and "hobbyists" here. We're talking about
> > Shops, and Businesses that create specific products, for specific needs,
> > and chose *BSD for what at least _was_ the freedom, and amount of
> > _choices_ it offered. Making it, by comparison, more _flexible_ than
> > it's alternatives. You'll effectively eliminate that market, traveling
> > in the direction you appear to be going.
> > If what I understand you to be saying is true. It appears FreeBSD is
> > simply looking to parrot Linux, and relinquish "The power to serve".
> > In exchange for competing for a strictly Desktop market. If true.
> > This will mark a very dark year in history, for FreeBSD.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >  Disappointed.
> 
Thank you for the reply, and clarification, Bartek.
> I think we've a little  misunderstanding here. At no point I've said
> nor heard that ports are about to be eliminated. I did hovewer heard
> that the goal is to deprecate them, as in, encourage users to move to
> pkg entirely, once pkg is a viable ports replacement, and to make that
> a default way to install/maintain software on FreeBSD. At the end, it
> would be very hard to 'eliminate' ports, since we still have to
> generate the packages with something, dont we? ;)
One wouldn't think so. But I've been surprised before. :)
> Even said that, I
> could be completely wrong here, misunderstood someone else and so on,
> and by no means this discussion is a statement of what is going on to
> happen with ports/pkg oficially, so, to quote D. Adams: DON'T PANIC.
> :)
Well. So could I. Hopefully I am. :)

Thanks again, for the thoughtful reply, Bartek.

--Chris

> 
> Kind regards,
> Bartek Rutkowski
> 
> >
> >> then the amount of work and
> >> the risk of breaking things by doing this ports improvement outweights
> >> its benefits. At this point I'd much rather like us to concentrate on
> >> making pkg a perfect replacement (I am mostly thinking about being
> >> able to package base for stripped down FreeBSD builds and pkg
> >> 'flavours' that would allow me install packages with custom options,
> >> like ports) and hold off making any changes to ports until we can
> >> safely state that 'pkg is the way to go for 99% of FreeBSD users and
> >> ports are for that 1% of package builders, nerds, tinkerers' etc.,
> >> unless we simply cant move forward without some change. And just to be
> >> sure, I am not against improving ports, but rather about making better
> >> choice of where to put our limited resources - I am supper happy to
> >> get back to this discussion once we can replace ports with pkg :)
> >>
> >> Kind regards,
> >> Bartek Rutkowski
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