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Subject: ports projects
From: asami@freebsd.org (Satoshi Asami)
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Well, people keep talking about documents and directions so let me try
something for the ports team.  Here is a list of things I would like
to see happen, or in the process of doing, or am aware that someone is
working on, that is important for the ports collection as a whole.
Basically it's some stuff from the wishlist I've made several years
ago (thankfully most of them are gone now! :) plus many other recent
developments.

Comments and additions most welcome.  By the way, "Good stuff!" means
I'm aware of the work but have taken a look at it only a couple of
times, and deeply regret that I don't have enough time to work closer
on it but would like you guys to keep working because I think it's a
very good idea.  Apologies to anyone who has a worthy project I have
overlooked due to inattention.

 @  PLIST cleanup (status: in progress)

    As mentioned yesterday, I changed the package build scripts to
    print out a list of files and directories that aren't listed in
    PLIST.  I've fixed a couple of glaring ones that bloat up the
    whole listing because it appears so many times (libtool, info/dir,
    zh_TW.big5), and now it's up to the maintainers or other
    interested people to do the cleanup.  You can find the listing at,
    for instance,

    http://bento.FreeBSD.org/errorlogs/3-latest-logs/extras.html

    I already see some spectacular blowups (crosssco/elm/tex...) which
    I hope will be fixed soon. :)

 @  Multi-level categories/reducing directory count (status: (slowly)
    in progress)

    We have discussed this a while ago on the ports list.  The idea is
    to have a variable-depth tree of categories (Editors/Emacs,
    Japanese/InputMethods/Canna,...).  Since this requires a repo-copy
    of the entire tree, we have also discussed changing the ports
    structure to have less directories (pkg/* -> pkg-*, etc.) to
    reduce the "too many small files and directories" problem of the
    ports tree that pessimizes the peformance on conventional
    filesystems (which is all we have, unfortunately).

    I'm planning to restart the discussion soon.

 @  Real upgrade support (status: in progress)

    The first step of splitting PKGNAME to PORTNAME/PORTVERSION has
    been completed.  Now we need to decide exactly how lay out the
    files in /var/db/pkg/${PORTNAME}, and implement hooks in
    bsd.port.mk/pkg_* to get it to work.  NetBSD might be of help.

    Anyone who wants to take a look at the pkg_* source? ;)

 @  Splitting up XFree86 (status: in limbo)

    I'd like to split up the XFree86 port so we can automatically
    build packages for individual components (imake, lib, bin, various
    servers, etc.), and have true dependencies to them, and use these
    as the recommended method for installing XFree86 instead of the
    XFree86-supplied tarballs.  This will get rid of a lot of special
    casing from the package build process and also reduce the amount
    of problems people have with ports only needing X libs
    automatically pulling in the entire XFree86, etc.

    However, the person who has been working on this the last couple
    of years (Taguchi-san) has been missing.  I'm trying to locate him
    but will appoint a replacement if I can't find him in the next
    couple of days.  The current plan is to split up XFree86-4 as well
    as create a bunch of XFree86-3 server ports ASAP, and then switch
    the default dependency to XFree86-4 based ports after the release
    of 3.5.  (XFree86-3 server ports will remain in the tree as long
    as the XFree86 project supports it so don't worry about your video
    chip.)

 @  PREFIX-cleanness (status: (slowly) in progress)

    There are PREFIX-clean fixes committed every day, but I'd like to
    make a master list to help people identify which ports are
    culprits.

    I'm thinking about modifying the package build script so that the
    mid-week (the runs that build RESTRICTED ports and everything
    since it's not for FTP) builds will run with LOCALBASE and X11BASE
    set to someplace else.  The XFree86 situation is a holdup though,
    since I need to be able to generate the XFree86 tarball on the fly
    to have the X11BASE change take effect.

 @  Modular file stowage (status: none)

    I'm thinking about storing all files from a port in its own
    subtree (like /usr/pkg/${PKGNAME}) and making a symlink tree from
    ${PREFIX}.  This will allow people to test new versions while
    still having the old version around, and quickly switching back if
    there is something wrong with the new one (we need to provide a
    script to switch back the links, which is not hard to implement).

    The previous item (PREFIX-cleanness) is a requisite for this to
    work.

 @  Security audit (working: kris and asami)

    I'll create a list of ports that install setuid/setgid/world
    writable direectories so Kris can use it for his ports security
    audit project.

 @  Portlint rewrite (working: mharo)

    http://people.FreeBSD.org/~mharo/portlint3/

    Good stuff!

 @  Freshports (working: dan@langille.org)

    http://www.freshports.org/ports.php3

    Good stuff!

 @  portconf (working: nbm)

    http://people.FreeBSD.org/~nbm/portconf/

    Good stuff!

 @  Optional dependencies (working: reg)

    http://people.freebsd.org/~reg/

    Good stuff!

 @  New packaging system (status: in limbo)

    Jordan has been threathening to replace the current packaging
    system for years (it was supposed to arrive with 3.0 :) and even
    has some working code snippents but the project has ground to a
    halt due to the developer leaving and also not enough attention
    paid by us.  Anyone want to pick it up?

 @  Fetching distfiles from the nearest master site (status: none)

    It really bothers me when I do a make on bento and it proceeds to
    go fetch the stuff from Europe or Japan, when it's readily
    available in California in one of the later MASTER_SITES.  The
    same goes for the people in the other sides of the ponds.  Any
    good ideas?  "ping" all the MASTER_SITES and sort them?  I know
    that NetBSD has a MASTER_SORT that allows you to specify
    preferences depending on domain name (.edu before .com, etc.), but
    network topology has little to do with domain names (for instance,
    there are too many .org's with miserable connectivity to the US
    due to them being located in Timbuktu) so I don't think it will
    work well.

    Of course, for most people, this is just a matter of setting
    MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE to a mirror site near you.  So maybe I
    shouldn't worry about it too much, the package building machine is
    one of the very rare cases where this is not desirable.

 @  Better handling of restrictions (what if depended port is
    illegal, is interactive, etc.) during package build (status: none)

    Right now what I do is either (1) build all packages with
    NO_RESTRICTED and/or FOR_CDROM defined, which will cause those
    that depend on such ports not being built, or (2) build everything
    and then delete stuff that are not allowed with
    clean-{restricted,for-cdrom}.  The latter has a side effect of
    deleting too many distfiles -- for instance, if there is a port
    that uses emacs-20.6.tar.gz plus a crypto distfile and have
    RESTRICTED set for the latter, clean-restricted will remove
    emacs-20.6.tar.gz as well.

 @  Fuzzy dependency lists (status: none)

    Right now, if you try to pkg_add xfig that's compiled with
    xpm-3.4e, and you only have xpm-3.4f on your system, it will barf.
    Granted some combinations won't work, but there should be a better
    way to handle this.  NetBSD might be of help.

 @  Find a replacement for myself so I can retire (status: none)

    Any takers? ;)

Satoshi


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