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Date:      Sun, 11 Jan 2015 15:54:39 -0800 (PST)
From:      Roger Marquis <marquis@roble.com>
To:        freebsd-ports@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: BIND REPLACE_BASE option
In-Reply-To: <mailman.1.1420977600.74846.freebsd-ports@freebsd.org>
References:  <mailman.1.1420977600.74846.freebsd-ports@freebsd.org>

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The BSD Dreamer wrote:
> +--On 8 janvier 2015 19:44:09 -0800 Doug Barton <dougb@dougbarton.us> wrote:
>> | Can you please explain why this option was removed? It's been in the
>> | ports for over 13 years, and lots of users utilized it.
>> |
>> I only removed it from bind99, it was never there in bind910.  I removed it
>> because it was a poor design idea to begin with, and it was making the port
>> harder to maintain.  Also, it was overwriting files in the base system,
>> which is a thing we do not want to do.

That sounds like the crux of the issue.  Named shouldn't have been in
base in the first place.  Removing the port option instead of the base
binary, IMO, makes two wrongs not one right.  My way or the highway might
be ok for Windows, Mac and Linux but port options are a big reason many
of us use and spec FreeBSD.

>> It was a bit like the /usr/bin/perl symlink, it was time for it to go.

"time for it to go", by whose definition?  Good code doesn't have a fixed
lifespan and the claimed rational doesn't constitute a good business case.

On the other hand it should be easy enough to write a bindXX-base wrapper
port.  Anyone care to quote bind10-base/Makefile?  That and fixing
openssh-portable's dialog option for overwrite_base which when selected
fails with "openssh-portable-6.7.p1_1,1 Overwrite base option is no
longer supported.."  Have to wonder how that got past the port
maintainers.

This is not unlike postfix-base and others which, in many cases, are
significantly improved by offering a cross-platform compatibility options
and not being short-sighted regarding the scope of $PREFIX.

Sometimes you really have to wonder whether these feature deprecations
are due less to resource shortages than to special interests outside of
FreeBSD's user-base.

IMO,
Roger Marquis



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