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Date:      Mon, 1 May 2000 23:44:32 +0530
From:      Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
To:        Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>
Cc:        Randy Katz <fastpoint@ccsales.com>, Shawn Barnhart <swb@grasslake.net>, "questions@freebsd.org" <questions@FreeBSD.ORG>, ports@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: stop complaining about x11 please (was: Re: Why does PORTS SUCK so BADLY!?)
Message-ID:  <20000501234432.A2998@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
In-Reply-To: <20000501113038.I24573@fw.wintelcom.net>; from bright@wintelcom.net on Mon, May 01, 2000 at 11:30:38AM -0700
References:  <009b01bfb389$96546cf0$b8209fc0@marlowe> <20000501101044.F24573@fw.wintelcom.net> <00b901bfb38f$e4625cd0$b8209fc0@marlowe> <20000501105116.B32172@ccsales.com> <20000501113038.I24573@fw.wintelcom.net>

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Alfred Perlstein said on May  1, 2000 at 11:30:38:
> * Randy Katz <fastpoint@ccsales.com> [000501 11:21] wrote:
> > Guys!!!
> > 
> > Oh come on, can't you try ./configure --help
> > All the parameters are there....that is if you know how to cd to the source (src) directory...!!!
> 
> no, ports should handle this, and is quite capable of handling it,
> if no one has this done by the weekend and it's ok with the ports
> master I'll implement it myself.
> 
> I was very annoyed to see that mrtg pulled in python which pulled
> in X11 and a lot of other huge items just because mrtg comes with
> a single python script that I didn't want.
> 
> Ports are supposed to be easy and the way to avoid mucking with
> terribly annoying configure scripts.

This is actually more general than x11 -- very often a program
optionally depends on something else, ie the configure script would
simply continue happily with that option disabled if it didn't find
it, but the port insists on pulling in that dependency too. For
instance the Qt/KDE port pulls in Mesa, but as far as I can see Mesa
only affects some qt demos and a couple of screensavers in KDE. It
would be nice if there were some kind of dialogue (or perhaps an
environment variable or make option) to ask the user whether such port
dependencies affecting only optional features should also be installed
or just ignored. Right now one can only edit the port makefile to
remove the dependency.

Rahul.


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