Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 09:04:04 -0400 From: "fbsd" <fbsd@a1poweruser.com> To: "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD. ORG" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Cc: ports@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Has the port collection become to large to handle. Message-ID: <MIEPLLIBMLEEABPDBIEGMEABHHAA.fbsd@a1poweruser.com> In-Reply-To: <44667EAF.10802@vonostingroup.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Comments have been posted about how to determine in a fair way which ports would be included in the most commonly used category? The solution to that concern is pretty easy to do. Modify the master make code to post a count to a special purpose FreeBSD website by passing it a cookie. Now every time a any user runs the port "make install" that special purpose FreeBSD website will be accessed counting how many times that port is really executed. Then use that count per new release of FreeBSD to determine the ports that go into the commonly used category. The side benefit is this would also bring to light the dead and unused ports that can be removed from the ports collections or put in an unsupported category which would further help in controlling the size of the base collection. Of course some precautions in counting the hits to the special purpose FreeBSD website would have to be used to drop attempts by people trying to manipulate the results in favor of some particular port. The comments from one of the maintainers about the fact that the maintainers are not allowed to build the official packages is a policy that can easily be changed. Its more important to have timely packages available then the security of waiting for the mass package build done once per new FreeBSD version release. A warning comment in the maintainer built package informing the installer that this package was built by the maintainer and not by the secure mass package build process will give the installer the info he needs to decide if they want to use that version of the package or wait for the official secure built version. This also allows the maintainer to build different versions of the package for each different version of major dependents such as php4/5 apache1/2 mysql3/4/5 whatever. The mass package build process does not allow this flexibility. The fact is the maintainer is all ready being trusted to manage the port so I see no reason NOT to trust him to create the matching package. Even the need of the secure massive package built process is now questionable. The resources and time needed for performing the secure massive package built must impact the release timeline of new FreeBSD releases. Doing away with it may streamline many other different internal release process.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?MIEPLLIBMLEEABPDBIEGMEABHHAA.fbsd>