Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 14:44:08 -0400 (EDT) From: Antoine Beaupre <beaupran@IRO.UMontreal.CA> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Adding the package concept to the ports collection Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0010191407430.20125-100000@phobos.IRO.UMontreal.CA>
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Hi everybody! I ask this question here by default, please, redirect me to proper resource if this one's not. I was wondering if it would be possible to add the 'package' concept to the ports collection in a sense that the database would include the name of the package or if there's none, why. An install target would then only have to download the package and save the compilation time. I also think that the package would be smaller than the source, and so, faster to download. I think the port collection as it is now has several drawbacks, in terms of a software indexing facility, that is. Upgrading ports is a nightmare. The more we go, the more various ports have dependency lists that grow and grow. So when a single package such as GTK or ORBit gets updated, a whole chunk of ports have to be updated too. The problem is that "updated" means: 1- download the new distfiles. 2- remove the older distfiles (not necessarly obvious since the databse does not contain the older filenames!) 3- recompile the dependencies. 4- install the dependecies With the package system integrated into the ports, it would be simpler: 1- download the packages 2- install the packages We could still keep the older port system for packages that do not allow freebsd to distribute packages. The problem with the current package system is that it does not resolve dependency problems by itself as the ports does. How could it anyways? A package is all it says: a package of information regarding a particular piece of software. It might include information on which other packages are needed by this one, but nothing else. Another thing about the port collection is that there is (yet) no wformal way to "update" a package. We all probably have benn through the same thing: installing a package that depends on an outdated one with the ports usually lead to duplicates packages installed, if one is not careful . When the port collection was a bit older this was a nightmare with no way out. But now, with the appearance of things such as 'pkg_version(1)' and the "PORTVERSION" variable , we could start considering adding some flexibility to the ports tree. Is it me or all this woudn't be that hard to implement? Just a PACKAGENAME variable along with a version variable of some sort (PORTVERSION would probably be OK) and a PACKAGE_SITE hierarchy of variables. That would be the biggest desgin problem... And for the "updateing" part, one would need to add the location of the pkg database with some variable and have something to check the existence of a "PACKAGENAME"* dir. Of course, dependy problems would have to be addressed, but I won't get into this here.... I would be personnally ready to work on the ports for this to happen but I want to know wether or not this would be a good idea, or if there's already some work in pregress. Thanks for any comment A. Si l'image donne l'illusion de savoir C'est que l'adage pretend que pour croire, L'important ne serait que de voir Lofofora To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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