From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Apr 13 14:41:05 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 698E016A4CF for ; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 14:41:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp0.server.rpi.edu (smtp0.server.rpi.edu [128.113.53.41]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0DDB343D41 for ; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 14:41:05 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.netel.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by smtp0.server.rpi.edu (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id i3DLeJEd028356; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:40:19 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <407C4035.8020609@ciam.ru> References: <20040413121925.GB29867@voodoo.oberon.net> <407C4035.8020609@ciam.ru> Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:40:18 -0400 To: Sergey Matveychuk From: Garance A Drosihn Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Scanned-By: CanIt (www . canit . ca) cc: freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Second "RFC" on pkg-data idea for ports 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, 13 Apr 2004 21:41:05 -0000 At 11:32 PM +0400 4/13/04, Sergey Matveychuk wrote: >Garance A Drosihn wrote: > >>But as I thought about adding future features, I ended up >>with something that looks more and more like XML... > >I really don't understand why you want to use XML-like format? >I think it may be XML (because of we have a standard) or complete >non-XML. Well, do not focus too much on whether it is "XML-like". It is just a format I dreamed up. It does what I want it to do. If someone has a better format, and a format which will be as easy for a simple program to process, I will be willing to try that format instead. I am not too hung up on this specific format. Note that I do want it to be easy to parse. I felt it might be bad to drag in a bunch of standard XML-processing libraries, because then my program will have a "dependency". Given that this program will be needed to process any port in the ports tree, I thought it would be a bad idea if the program depended on some library which was not in the base system. And not just "the" base system, but in *every* base system that people try to build ports on. That is what I was thinking of when I picked this specific format. With this strict, limited format, it should be easy to write a program that can do all the processing we want to do (at least for now). Perhaps it is wrong for me to go for a simple format, and this project needs to do "real XML" so future work can build on it. It maybe that my simple format is too simple, and too limiting. If so, then that might also be a good reason for me to table this project for now. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu