From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Sep 8 02:39:41 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ports@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3E5AC10656B0 for ; Wed, 8 Sep 2010 02:39:41 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dougb@FreeBSD.org) Received: from mail2.fluidhosting.com (mx21.fluidhosting.com [204.14.89.4]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D949E8FC17 for ; Wed, 8 Sep 2010 02:39:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 3139 invoked by uid 399); 8 Sep 2010 02:39:39 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO ?192.168.0.142?) (dougb@dougbarton.us@127.0.0.1) by localhost with ESMTPAM; 8 Sep 2010 02:39:39 -0000 X-Originating-IP: 127.0.0.1 X-Sender: dougb@dougbarton.us Message-ID: <4C86F769.2020704@FreeBSD.org> Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:39:37 -0700 From: Doug Barton Organization: http://SupersetSolutions.com/ User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100825 Thunderbird/3.1.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lapo Luchini References: <4C866AB3.4030802@lapo.it> <4C868650.7090504@FreeBSD.org> <4C869EA8.4020002@lapo.it> In-Reply-To: <4C869EA8.4020002@lapo.it> X-Enigmail-Version: 1.1.1 OpenPGP: id=1A1ABC84 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: FreeBSD Ports , Stanislav Sedov , Andrew Pantyukhin , Martin Wilke Subject: Re: XPI infrastructure needs some love X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:39:41 -0000 On 09/07/2010 01:20 PM, Lapo Luchini wrote: > Doug Barton wrote: > >> For those that we are simply >> repackaging, what's the value in doing that, vs. simply allowing >> users to download them from mozilla's site? > > Well, in vastly multi-user places there might of course be good reasons > to have a single centralized package instead of > one-for-each-user-account, but OTOH... places like that are not much > more used in this a-few-PCs-per-household world we currently live in. I maintain my own archive for my personal platforms (multibooting different OS', re-installing not-infrequently) because it makes it easier to keep things consistent, amongst other reasons. For the purpose you describe FreeBSD packages are neither useful nor desirable since the individual user still has to install the thing. > Still, I feel that as a *somewhat cleaner* choice and go to the extent > of creating a port for every extension I do use (on my single-user > machines), but I'm not quite sure I'd be able to justify that with real > arguments other than a warm fuzzy feeling. ;) My concern with this for some time is that there is little to no actual benefit for the vast majority of these ports, however they do consume resources. Admittedly not an overwhelming number of resources, but given the fact that ports/package resources are stretched thin, and we'd like to expand support for packages going forward, I think we need to carefully evaluate these choices, especially given that we're losing maintainers. As a quick overview I did a find for ports with xpi in the name and there are well over 100. That doesn't include other ports with different naming conventions. My suggestion is that we simply eliminate these ports altogether, but I realize that's not likely to happen. :) Doug -- ... and that's just a little bit of history repeating. -- Propellerheads Improve the effectiveness of your Internet presence with a domain name makeover! http://SupersetSolutions.com/