From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jun 29 05:30:17 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B755316A4CF for ; Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:30:17 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mail.soaustin.net (mail.soaustin.net [207.200.4.66]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A778D43D39 for ; Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:30:17 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from linimon@lonesome.com) Received: by mail.soaustin.net (Postfix, from userid 502) id 316A11430B; Tue, 29 Jun 2004 00:30:17 -0500 (CDT) Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 00:30:17 -0500 (CDT) From: Mark Linimon X-X-Sender: linimon@pancho To: Bob Melson In-Reply-To: <40E0F356.8030603@earthlink.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A question about dependencies X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:30:17 -0000 On Mon, 28 Jun 2004, Bob Melson wrote: > To the extent that I believe this to be a problem, it seems to be to > be one of management and practice. At the same time, it seems also > to reflect a degree of, for lack of a better word, sloppiness. The problem is one of resources to do the necessary regression testing. i.e. before removing a dependency from a port in the ports tree, one is obligated to prove that that dependency is not required. Otherwise installations of the port can (at least theoretically) break. The ports build cluster will be happy to find these and point them out to you when you do that :-) In the face of (at the very latest count) 678 ports PRs, and 1837 ports that fail to build in at least one build environment (defined as cross-product of architecture and release), 170 of which do not even build on i386-4-stable, and a number of other desired improvements to the ports infrastructure requiring regression testing (78 PRs for that alone), the answer is that trimming the dependencies is just something that generally does not show up on the radar. This is not to say that these aren't bugs -- they are -- and they can be checked by sufficiently motivated people by (e.g.) creating a clean ports jail and installing and running each package with the trimmed-down dependencies to see if they do indeed still work. It's merely a question of where our volunteers want to spend their time and effort. mcl