Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 08:59:22 -0400 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ports (was: Ugly Huge BSD Monster) Message-ID: <20030905125922.GA617@online.fr> In-Reply-To: <3F58431A.9672EF50@mindspring.com> References: <20030904204816.GA32127@online.fr> <3F58431A.9672EF50@mindspring.com>
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Terry Lambert said on Sep 5, 2003 at 01:02:34:
> Rahul Siddharthan wrote:
> > > Interesting. I tried downloading the tarball, but it doesn't compile;
> >
> > cd /usr/ports/x11-wm/ctwm && make install clean
> > or
> > pkg_add -r ctwm
> >
> > Did you try to compile KDE from the raw tarball too? That would
> > explain a lot about all those alleged incompatibilities with FreeBSD.
>
> Actually, it would just broaden his criteria to "out of the box".
Actually, nobody except distribution maintainers and true "bleeding
edge" people compiles the raw tarballs on linux either. They use their
distribution's packages (or, in gentoo's case, their ports like
"portage"), and all distributions patch the stuff. Not all the patches
are useful upstream; bugfixes from FreeBSD do make it, search for #ifdef
__FreeBSD__ in the sources.
I wanted to (indirectly) point out that the complaints of someone who
can't find a port in the ports tree and/or isn't aware of the ports
system should not be taken seriously.
In the case of Brett and the raw ctwm tarball I suspect it's something
trivially stupid like using the wrong kind of make or something. There
don't seem to be any show-stopping patches in the ports tree. The
ports system doesn't only supply patches, it also supplies the correct
configure-make commands including specifying gmake/imake as necessary,
very useful for people who can't or won't RTFM.
In the case of KDE, I already pointed out exactly how stupid his
complaints are. Bottom line: don't take his complaints seriously.
Especially when he complains about GPL software ("ctwm won't compile
under GCC"? Excuse me, what other compiler is widespread on free
systems, and how many people use these weird window managers on
proprietary Unix?)
-- Rahul
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