[Bug 230837] x11-servers/xorg-server: make install fails for xorg-server-1.18.4_9,1

[bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org]

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=230837

--- Comment #10 from Adrian Bocaniciu <a.bocaniciu at computer.org> ---
(In reply to Niclas Zeising from comment #9)

I do not agree that "this has always been done so" is an acceptable answer to
"this is wrong".

Of course I am perfectly aware that any maintainer of an open source project
can work for that only a limited time and I completely agree that he is free to
decide that various possible improvements are not worth the effort to implement
them.

Nevertheless, the fact that someone cannot improve something should not prevent
him to recognize the defects of the current solution.

All the package managers used by the various Linux distribution have their
origins in the ports system of FreeBSD/NetBSD, but they have introduced various
improvements and now they are much more convenient than their ancient ancestor.

While on several kinds of servers I use FreeBSD, on desktops/laptops I use
Gentoo and the methods used by Gentoo for tracking package dependencies and
options are now much better than in FreeBSD.

In Gentoo, after I give the command of making and installing some "port", I can
usually forget about it and continue with other tasks, because the command will
almost always succeed automatically.

Many, many years ago, this was also true in FreeBSD, but now most port upgrades
have become unbelievably tedious because the port installation is interrupted
for a very large number of times, requiring manual intervention and what is
worse is that it is unpredictable how many interruptions will happen.

Because Firefox was deinstalled when I applied the solution from UPDATING for
xorg-server, I had to reinstall it.

I started the installation a day ago, and it is still not finished, because the
process was interrupted hundreds of time. As I do not have time to watch it
continuously, every interruption was solved only when I happened to check for
progress, which is what caused the installation to not be finished yet.


The causes for FreeBSD interruptions:

1. Requests for port options. This is solved in Gentoo by the global "USE"
settings, which store the user preferences


2. Request to deinstall ports that cannot be reinstalled without being
deinstalled. Such requests happen far more seldom in Gentoo, but when they
happen, the list of ports that must be deinstalled is displayed before starting
the making of the selected port and you can deinstall all of them with a single
command. In FreeBSD it is unpredictable how many times making a port will be
interrupted with requests to deinstall another port.


3. Besides the explicit requests to deinstall some ports, making a port can
fail a very large number of times and the solution is also to deinstall some
other port, but the inadequate system of checking the port dependencies fail to
recognize the need for deinstallation and gives extremely confusing error
messages instead.


For example, during making firefox, the worst offender was the failure to make
docbook-utils. While there was an entry in UPDATING for deleting some ports
before updating docbook, the list given there was not complete, so I had to
spend a lot of time while making docbook-utils failed more than ten times with
obscure error message that were removed one by one by deinstalling some other
had to discover port.


In conclusion doing things as they have always been done has become worse and
worse. You may not have the power to do anything about it, but the existing
deficiencies must be recognized.

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