Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:18:32 -0800 From: Brooks Davis <brooks@one-eyed-alien.net> To: Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net> Cc: ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why does everybody switch to dynamic plists? Message-ID: <20050121201832.GB2866@odin.ac.hmc.edu> In-Reply-To: <20050121205202.4092fc5a@Magellan.Leidinger.net> References: <20050121205202.4092fc5a@Magellan.Leidinger.net>
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--eAbsdosE1cNLO4uF Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 08:52:02PM +0100, Alexander Leidinger wrote: > Hi, >=20 > can someone please tell me why people enjoy to use dynamic plists, even > when there was a static plist already? >=20 > With a dynamic plist: > - We lose the ability to search for files which aren't installed. > (useful for users) > - We lose the ability to determine if a particular port contains what > we search. > (useful for users) > - We lose the ability to check just with grep if two ports install > conflicting files (in case we get a report of a conflict it's very > nice to not need to install a port to verify the conflict). > (useful for users and port developers) All of these could easily be handled by storing the generated plists from the ports cluster. That would also handle PLIST_FILE and PLIST_DIRS which I use a lot for small ports. > - We lose the ability to use portlint to check the plist (if the > maintainer checks the generated one he just can use a static plist). > BTW.: Does portlint know how to check the embedded plist (the > Makefile variables)? > (useful for port developers) I'm not fully convinced this is a minus. I don't think portlint has ever round a real issue in my plist, but it sure spews lots of marginal warnings related to config file and state directory handling (in a large portion of my ports I have to create directories I may not be able to delete so I have to use the @unexec rmdir trick. Many programs also need directories in /var.) > - We lose the ability to maybe answer support requests without the need > to install the software. > (useful for "the frontliners") Building a database from package cluster output would probably be more useful here as well. > + We don't need to take care if the plist changes. > (useful for port developers) I think the fact that you can't forget to update a plist that doesn't exist is quite useful. > I count 1 positive and 5 negative aspects. >=20 > If the developer of a port puts the dynamic plist generation into a > Makefile target instead of inlining it into the build/install process, > he doesn't needs to put alot more effort into the development process > (just one "make <generate-the-plist-target>") and gets the benefits of > static plists too. >=20 > Maybe I've overlooked something, but so far I haven't seen a dynamic > plist which needs to be a dynamic one. So I think at least 99% of our > dynamic plists don't need to be dynamic. I don't have enough time to maintain my small set of ports as well as I'd like. Using dynamic plists save me time and is one less thing to forget to do. I think you raise some real issues, but I think we'd be better off letting machines do this work. It's tedious, error prone, and often trivial to automate. -- Brooks --=20 Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE. PGP fingerprint 655D 519C 26A7 82E7 2529 9BF0 5D8E 8BE9 F238 1AD4 --eAbsdosE1cNLO4uF Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFB8WOXXY6L6fI4GtQRAtcHAJoCK/RQcCi5aecOl5yGGRh0h2mNeQCghotx TzHcV0g6R+yKS8uklH4ERys= =MRB+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --eAbsdosE1cNLO4uF--
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