Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 08:16:26 -0800 From: Eivind Eklund <eivind@FreeBSD.org> To: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> Cc: freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Call for feedback on a Ports-collection change Message-ID: <20040109161626.GA64772@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <p0602041abc1660a416d0@[128.113.24.47]>
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Note: I do not read ports@, so any On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 07:49:25PM -0500, Garance A Drosihn wrote: > What I want to do is create one new file per port, and then > move almost all the other files into that new file. Ideally > each port would end up with just two files. The Makefile, > and this new file (some ports might also need a Makefile.inc > file). Especially as disks get ever-larger, I think we're > better off with fewer-but-larger files, instead of a larger > number of tiny files. I think this would be a step backward, at least for the way I work with ports. * It makes it harder to separate out information for generic processing Example: Today, I can find that there is a bunch of ports with the same pkg-descr by doing # find /usr/ports -name pkg-descr | xargs md5 > md5list # egrep $(echo $(awk '{print $1}' < md5list | sort | uniq -d) | sed s/\ /\|/g) md5list That's something that I can just type out, by knowing the standard Unix utilities. I would be (pleasantly :-) surprised if this was as easy after collecting to one file (and remember, learning new syntax etc makes it harder.) [The above is not tested, BTW - I redo these each time I think I should get around to fixing the people that duplicate pkg-descrs when they get a repo-copy, and then I always find the amount of work involved in contacting that many people too daunting, and go off do something else instead.] * It makes normal development harder; e.g, creating patchsets, and testing variations in patches. * It makes it harder for users to understand what is going on (there is an extra level of indirection, more or less) * It adds another complication for the day when we will be able to get rid of make from ports (this is a personal interest - I believe that there are other script languages than make that probably are more appropriate to use.) The inode goal is laudable, but I think we should focus on ease of development (and thus features) in preference to saving disk space. Disks are getting cheaper all the time, while developer time is always scarce. (Of course, any solution that also improve developer productivity seems nice :-) Eivind.
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