From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Sun May 14 00:06:10 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ports@freebsd.org 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 2452416A401; Sun, 14 May 2006 00:06:10 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from scrappy@hub.org) Received: from hub.org (hub.org [200.46.204.220]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9C8E643D45; Sun, 14 May 2006 00:06:09 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from scrappy@hub.org) Received: from localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.208.251]) by hub.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4A5BC290C20; Sat, 13 May 2006 21:06:04 -0300 (ADT) Received: from hub.org ([200.46.204.220]) by localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.208.251]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 48674-07; Sat, 13 May 2006 21:06:08 -0300 (ADT) Received: from ganymede.hub.org (blk-7-151-244.eastlink.ca [71.7.151.244]) by hub.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BF0B7290C1F; Sat, 13 May 2006 21:06:03 -0300 (ADT) Received: by ganymede.hub.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 4A0985DA8D; Sat, 13 May 2006 21:06:12 -0300 (ADT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ganymede.hub.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 48E755C6B0; Sat, 13 May 2006 21:06:12 -0300 (ADT) Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 21:06:12 -0300 (ADT) From: "Marc G. Fournier" To: Garance A Drosihn In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20060513210114.U1279@ganymede.hub.org> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: fbsd@a1poweruser.com, ports@freebsd.org, "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD. ORG" Subject: Re: Has the port collection become to large to handle. 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: Sun, 14 May 2006 00:06:10 -0000 On Sat, 13 May 2006, Garance A Drosihn wrote: > At 2:28 PM -0400 5/13/06, 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? > > This is a good question. For all those people who want > to roll their eyes and ignore this question, please > answer it. Where *DO* you draw the line? Obviously it's > not at 10,000 ports. Will it be 20,000? 50,000? How > many programs exist? Will every single program known to > man eventually be in the ports collection? How hopeless > is that? And if not, then "Where do you draw the line?". Why draw a line? Why not just improve installing from ports so that you don't have to download the whole ports collection to do so? For those with 'always on' internet connections, this should be *too* difficult ... all you'd need to do is: download ports-base, which would have to include INDEX type: make fetch-postfix and let the make system be smart enough to know to pull down mail/postfix ... something like a 'fetch' of a postfix.tar.gz tarball from the closest ftp server, untar it in /usr/ports/mail/postfix, and that "seeds" your ports tree ... go into mail/postfix and type 'make install' ... have the make system smart enough that if a dependency isn't found, first thing it does is grabs down that dependency to make it, recursively ... Now, your /usr/ports will only contain those "ports" that you actually use ... a 'self-learning ports tree', of sources ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664