Just wanted to install vim - had to spend entire day building X11

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Mon, 10 Jan 2011 12:43:13 +0100, Tony Maserati <abletony84 at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:06 AM, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida at ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
>>On Sun, 9 Jan 2011 22:19:02 +0100, Tony Maserati <abletony84 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I'm just curious - what's the point of including X11 as a dependency
>>> to vim?  And then making a vim-lite port (which you usually discover
>>> after installing X11). How about making it vim and vim-x11 instead?
>>
>> Maybe because gvim is really *much* nicer than plain console-based vim
>> sessions.
>>
>> The vim-lite port exists for those cases when you really want to install
>> just plain good ol' vim without all the bells and whistles.  You can also
>> install editors/vim with WITHOUT_X11='true' to avoid the pulling of all
>> this X11 stuff.
>
> I hear that - but if I want gvim I'll install gvim. What it's doing
> here is installing something I didn't ask for, well actually, it's
> fooling me into giving me something I don't need.

The tricky bit is that there's no gvim port.  There are two choices one
can make when porting software like this:

  * Add a default port that installs the 'full experience', and a second
    meta-port that has options suitable for minimalists.

  * Add a default port that is minimal, and a meta-port that can pull in
    all the necessary bits for the full-blown user experience.

I agree that it's confusing to remember which port has chosen which
option, but there isn't much a porter (e.g. obrien in this case) can do
to satisfy *both* groups of users.

I'm sorry that you had to install software that you don't really need
and I can help you clean up by saving your installed ports as 'binary
packages' and re-installing just the bits that you _really_ want to have
around.  Other than that, I don't know if there's any way to change the
status quo of the vim ports to be able to satisfy automatically both
types of user needs.