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Date:      Sat, 13 May 2006 11:30:11 -0800
From:      Beech Rintoul <beech@alaskaparadise.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, fbsd@a1poweruser.com
Subject:   Re: Has the port collection become to large to handle.
Message-ID:  <200605131130.13639.beech@alaskaparadise.com>
In-Reply-To: <MIEPLLIBMLEEABPDBIEGIEPBHGAA.fbsd@a1poweruser.com>
References:  <MIEPLLIBMLEEABPDBIEGIEPBHGAA.fbsd@a1poweruser.com>

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On Saturday 13 May 2006 10:28, fbsd wrote:
> To all question list readers;
>
> Now with 14576 ports in the collection where do you
> draw the line that its too large to be downloading
> the whole collection when you just use 10 or 20 of them?
> The port collection is growing at a ever increasing rate per month.
> The mass majority of the ports are so special purpose that only a
> very few people have need of them. Sure there are ways to limit
> the categories you select to download, but still the size of
> the most used categories is too large and loaded with ports not
> commonly used by the general user.
>
> So people them use the packages. But the problem with the
> packages is they are not updated every time changes are
> made to the port they were created from. Also packages that
> have dependants like php4/php5 or mysql4/mysql5 are not being
> updated to use the newer versions of those dependants as they come
> out.
>
> I for one think the port/package collection has already grown to
> large to handle in it's present state.
> Users are consuming massive bandwidth to download and it
> consumes a very large chunk of disk space. Saying nothing about
> the wasted resources consumed to back it up repeatedly.
>
> I have gone to using the package version for everything and
> only downloading the ports config files for packages that
> I need to compile from scratch to change some add on function.
> This methodology has worked fine since FreeBSD version 3.0 as
> I used each new release of FreeBSD up to 6.1.
>
> Now in 6.1 there is problems with packages that have not been
> recreated using the new system make file.
> This problem is caused by there being no mandatory requirement on
> the ports maintainers to recreate the packages any time one of the
> dependants change or when changes are made to the canned make
> process
> or when dependants show up as broken. Yes I know what a large task
> this is and that it requires a lot of run time to accomplish.

Compiling a package is trivial, but it would be a security nightmare to hav=
e=20
maintainers be responsible for it. All packages are built in an environment=
=20
known to be secure.  If you really want to help, consider donating some=20
hardware to the build cluster.

>
> So my question is how do we users make our needs known
> to the ports maintainer group so that will seriously address
> the problem of the packages being outdated?
>
> Are there other people on this list who are dissatisfied with the
> packages and the problems associated with using packages and ports
> mixed together?
>
> What are your thoughts about requesting the ports group to create
> a new category containing just the ports most commonly used
> including
> their dependents and making this general category the default
> used to download. This would be a much smaller sized download
> containing everything necessary to build the most used ports.
> Many of the dependents are used over and over by many
> different port applications.
>
> This new category would them be given priority in keeping
> their packages up to date. Could even take this idea one step
> further
> and say that only ports in this category will have packages
> built and keep up to date. All ports not in this special
> category will not have packages built at all. I think this
> would help the port group to better manager their people resources
> and serve the needs of the user community better.
>
> Another idea I would like to throw out to the list is how about
> requesting the ports group to add a function to packages so the
> installer of the package can select what version of the dependent
> components should be included in the install.
> Much like "make config" does in the ports system?
> The packages system already automatically launches the download
> of dependent packages so why not give the installer the option to
> select which version of the dependent to fetch.
> Like in php4/5 or mysql4/5 or apache 13/20. This way the package
> is more flexible and the port maintainer does not have to build
> a different version of the parent package for each version of
> the dependant which is available.
>
> The whole idea behind this post is to give the general users who
> reads this questions list an opportunity to brainstorm about ways to
> make the ports/package collection better and easier to use.
> This may help the ports group in understanding the needs and
> direction we the users would like to see the management of
> the collection to take.
> If we don't speak up they will just think things are ok as they are
> now.
> FreeBSD is a public project. The ports group are not the only
> users who can give input about the direction and policies
> concerning the future of the ports/package collection.
>
>
> All feedback welcome.
>
>
>
>
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> To unsubscribe, send any mail to
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