From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Sep 8 02:27:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id CAA20250 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 02:27:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from athena.milk.it (ssigala@line13.globalnet.it [195.206.2.42]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id CAA20244 for ; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 02:27:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (ssigala@localhost) by athena.milk.it (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id LAA07463 for ; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 11:27:27 +0200 X-Authentication-Warning: athena.milk.it: ssigala owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 11:27:16 +0200 (MET DST) From: "S. Sigala" X-Sender: ssigala@athena.milk.it To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: My FreeBSD Wish List... Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk ... obviously IMHO (I'm sure that this will start an interesting discussion, while i don't what to start a holy war): * Move the ports packages prefix directory from /usr/local to /usr/opt or something like. /usr/local should be reserved for user compiled packages, and should be created empty by default, as other operating systems already do. The X11 ports should not be installed in /usr/X11R6 but in the ports directory /usr/opt, the X Window directories tree should be never touched by the ports, i.e. should be like /usr/bin or /usr/lib ... the user is 100% sure that: * the packages code is only in /usr/opt; * the /usr/X11R6 don't contain anything but the XFree86 Inc. code. * he may create a separate partition for /usr/local and /usr/opt (and /usr/X11R6) This makes the OS updates easy and the OS clean. * Replace the current package format with the RedHat RPM one, while using the Makefile idea for porting. The current bsd.port.mk based Makefiles porting idea is excellent, but what i suggest is an hybrid union of the two methods. The ports deltas and Makefiles should remain the same, while only the package format may change. This is because: * The current tarred+gzipped format is slow, try to do a pkg_info on a XEmacs or on a TeTeX package (a solution may be the .zip format...) * The dependencies are not so useful as they would be. The dependencies should help the user doing upgrades, and is here that the RPM format comes. * The RPM code is good and free (while is GPLed, i know...). This makes, again, the OS updates easy. Note: i'm using BOTH the FreeBSD and the RedHat Linux operating systems. I'm not talking in theory, but from experience; I suggest this because i have tried BOTH the package systems and found some pros and cons. What do you think? Regards, -sandro