From owner-freebsd-hackers  Mon May 31  7:38:37 1999
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To: Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
Cc: mladavac@metropolitan.at (Ladavac Marino), taavi@uninet.ee,
	nick.hibma@jrc.it, freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG,
	freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: a two-level port system?  (fwd)
References: <199905311039.MAA18732@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
From: Rajappa Iyer <rajappa@mindspring.com>
Date: 31 May 1999 10:42:09 -0400
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Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> writes:

> in fact i think the biggest problem, performancewise, is the presence
> of multiple subdirs per port.

Well, if we are going to change the ports mechanism, may I suggest
that we make it easy to create `foreign' packages?  Let me explain.
In an ideal world, I'd like to use

cd /usr/ports/...
make
make package

on any of the platforms that has a ported ports mechanism (i.e. BSD
make and /usr/share/mk) in place.  Thus, I could see living with a
file directory structure as below:

+
| Makefile
| md5
|
+- FreeBSD 
|  | PLIST
|  | patches-*
|  | DESCR etc.
|     
+- SunOS
   | pkg-related files
   | patches-*

etc. 

Now this doesn't reduce the overall file/directory count, but it does
reduce the subdir count on each platform.  Also, it gives the original
author an incentive to use the ports mechanism for all platforms that
s/he writes the package for.  In an ideal world, it would reduce the
burden of the ports maintainers and increase the number of packages
available off the bat for FreeBSD.  (Hey, one can hope, can't one?)
This would also allow FreeBSD to share ports with {Net|Open}BSD.

What do people think?

rsi
-- 
<rajappa@mindspring.com> a.k.a. Rajappa Iyer.	New York, New York.
	We're too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet.


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