Has the port collection become to large to handle.

[Adrian Pavone]

>> And what about the case of a port that would be built many times over
>> its lifetime, mainly due to program version changes? The first one
>> that springs to mind would be Firefox. Firefox has had a number of
>> version changes in the same space of time that Exim, a very commonly
>> used mail server application, has been updated, and assuming an even
>> distribution of mail servers and desktop users with firefox, firefox
>> would appear to be 10-20 times more active over it's lifetime.
>
>
> And your point being?
>
>> It is also common for people with a desktop computer to format their
>> HDD every 3 months or so, and every time this occured, the desktop PC
>> ports (Xorg, Firefox, KDE/XFCE/GNOME, OpenOffice.org, etc.) would get
>> a rebuild/redownload, again throwing the stastics out of whack.
>
>
> No its still being used isnt it which is what we are interested in.
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>
>
I'm sorry, but when I read the continual posts on this topic, all stated 
that the count would occur while installing, not in usage. If the 
suggestion was that the FreeBSD system would report what packages where 
being used on a regular basis (the only way to properly record what 
ports/packages were being used), then that is an entirely seperate 
discussion, and one that I have not addressed to this point. However, If 
that was your suggestion, then I am extremely glad that is not how the 
ports system currently operates, for the same reason I am glad that 
spyware is not installed on my computer.

If you do not have a regular reporting to home base mechanism in place, 
then how would you be able to monitor what is "still being used .. which 
is what we are interested in"?