I Can Has Packages?

[Matthew Seaman]

On 20/08/2012 04:07, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
>>>>>> "Polytropon" == Polytropon  <freebsd at edvax.de> writes:
> 
> 
> Polytropon> I just assume providing packages for every imaginable
> Polytropon> combination requires lots of resources. As an example
> Polytropon> take OpenOffice: Every language variant, then integration
> Polytropon> with KDE, Gnome, or none of them, and printing support
> Polytropon> (I think). That would be many hours of compiling, and
> Polytropon> lots of storage space needed (note: current _and_ older
> Polytropon> packages are needed, plus supported architectures).
> 
> Indeed.
> 
> Which is why I gave up on packages long ago.
> 
> Learn. To. Compile.
> 
> Embrace your local cc. :)
> 

Well, I hope there is some sort of happy medium between the level of
package support in FreeBSD at the moment, and compiling everything from
source.  That's what the pkgng project hopes to achieve anyhow.

On the question of supporting flavours and sub-packages: yes, this will
be absolutely necessary.  Even so, it won't provide /all/ the
flexibility that compiling your own does, but it should target the most
commonly used combinations of options.  I always keep saying the ideal
situation would be that you could customise and compile just your own
really mission critical software and freely mix that with installing
pre-compiled packages of anything else from the public repositories.

Note that sub-packages is effectively a way of reducing the number of
options in many ports: a lot of the time options enable/disable
compiling additional bits of software or adding/removing various files
from the resulting packages, but those files could just as easily be
supplied as a sub-package.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey


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