Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2011 00:18:26 +0100 From: Michel Talon <talon@lpthe.jussieu.fr> To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Superfluous dependencies Message-ID: <20110312231826.GA22954@lpthe.jussieu.fr>
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Mark Linimon said: > On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 02:12:34PM -0800, Charlie Kester wrote: > > I'm not aware of any tool that will display a similar dependency tree > > for a port *before* it is installed. > > http://portsmon.freebsd.org/portdependencytree.py > > Note: it's running a live set of queries on the tree, so it's slow. Wonderful tool! Using it i have found a nice illustration of the title of the thread by looking at the dependencies generated by the ports math/maxima. If you run it you will find *tons* of dependecies. However, being a regular user of maxima, that i compile myself on my machine using cmucl i know that maxima has exactly *one* dependency, a lisp system. Taking the example of cmucl one needs only a previous binary version of cmucl, because it is written in lisp, and the base C compiler to produce the executable "lisp". It should not be much different with sbcl, except if one foolishly adjoins unnecessary optional software. When having a lisp, one can in fact compile maxima without even using make, but make simplifies the job. It is not *necessary* to have optional gnuplot (which one may or may not desire), and even less to have (*) graphical front ends like xmaxima or wxmaxima. The teTeX dependency is completely superfluous. I mention this example because it is characteristic of a tendency of many FreeBSD ports to add a kitchen sink of superfluous dependencies which render upgrades and so on complicated. (*) most serious users of CAS software i know (maple, etc.) always type their code in a window using a standard editor, and copy-paste it in another window running maple, maxima, etc. Using the GUI toolkits is almost always a considerable loss of time. -- Michel TALON
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