From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 28 19:21:07 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 07A501065670 for ; Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:21:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from talon@lpthe.jussieu.fr) Received: from shiva.jussieu.fr (shiva.jussieu.fr [134.157.0.129]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A13D8FC08 for ; Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:21:06 +0000 (UTC) Received: from parthe.lpthe.jussieu.fr (parthe.lpthe.jussieu.fr [134.157.10.1]) by shiva.jussieu.fr (8.14.4/jtpda-5.4) with ESMTP id q0SJ9a7u053817 for ; Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:09:49 +0100 (CET) X-Ids: 168 Received: from [192.168.1.101] (sge91-2-82-227-32-26.fbx.proxad.net [82.227.32.26]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by parthe.lpthe.jussieu.fr (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 493662235A for ; Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:09:35 +0100 (CET) From: Michel Talon Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:09:34 +0100 Message-Id: <39B6DA4E-AFA2-486D-8CDD-D737310FE6B2@lpthe.jussieu.fr> To: freebsd-questions Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1251.1) X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1251.1) X-Miltered: at jchkmail.jussieu.fr with ID 4F2447F0.001 by Joe's j-chkmail (http : // j-chkmail dot ensmp dot fr)! X-j-chkmail-Enveloppe: 4F2447F0.001/134.157.10.1/parthe.lpthe.jussieu.fr/parthe.lpthe.jussieu.fr/ Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Cc: Subject: Re: When I put up any version of FBSD I usually try to install Maxima ... X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:21:07 -0000 Roland Smith wrote: The default build of gnuplot is quite heavy, pulling in wxwidgets and = teTeX. Personally, I would recommend the following settings: enable X11, GD, = gridb ox, thinsplines and cairo, and disable the rest; pdflib didn't work last = time I tried it. WXwidgets is overkill IMO, the standard X11 support works = fine. And teTeX is deprecated upstream in favor of TeXLive. Gnuplot is the prototypical example of a port which is badly managed. = There are far too many dependencies which are absolutely *non necessary* There is = absolutely no necessity of having TeX (in any form whatsoever) to run Gnuplot. In fact Gnuplot = can emit TeX instructions if asked to do it, but many people never use this feature, and those who care may very well include the graphs on another machine, = run TeX elsewhere, etc. The only necessary features are to emit X11 plots and ps plots. The ps = plots can be transformed to pdf by ps2pdf, which is a basic program on almost all = machines. The more modern inclined may like svg plots if they have inkscape. But the cherry = on the cake is that gnu plot requires pdflib, which is a non free library such that the = FreeBSD project cannot ship a working gnuplot binary (that is gnuplot will not = start without libpdf for which one needs to download source and compile). Hence one of the = most useful tools on a computer doesn't work out of the box. Things such as that should never occur, a = port maintainer should only include the *strict minimum* dependencies necessary to make the = port work, it is not his job to include the whole kitchen sink of dependencies that could be useful = in some cases. Of course there are correlated casualties to such misbehavior such as = the above problem afflicting=20 maxima. Once again, while doing plots is a useful feature of maxima, = requiring gnuplot, it is not a central feature of maxima, the plots can be done with other tools than = gnuplot. Similarly maxima has a TeX dependency which has absolutely no reason to be here. = Of course maxima can output formulas in TeX notation, but there is no necessity to do that, = and i am quite sure that many people only use the html rendering produced by wxmaxima. In the past people have chased deprecated ports in the FreeBSD ports = system, and this has caused a lot of controversy (personaly i approve this operation). But chasing inappropriate = dependencies would be far more useful if one wants to arrive at a situation where one can envision to use binary packages = for most installations of FreeBSD (those which don't require fine tuning). At present, the gnuplot example = shows that even most basic installations cannot be provided out of the box without compiling = something - which implies in particular that no apt-get like tool can be devised.=20 -- Michel Talon talon@lpthe.jussieu.fr