From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Sep 11 13:06:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id NAA14157 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 13:06:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mercury.ukc.ac.uk (mercury.ukc.ac.uk [129.12.21.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id NAA14147 for ; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 13:06:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from kestrel.ukc.ac.uk by mercury.ukc.ac.uk with SMTP (PP); Thu, 11 Sep 1997 21:06:18 +0100 Received: from localhost by kestrel.ukc.ac.uk (5.x/UKC-2.14) id AA22327; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 21:06:17 +0100 Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 21:06:16 +0100 (BST) From: "K.J.Koster" To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Suggestion for ports... Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Dear All, I just did my first installation from the `ports' (yes, a british ispell), and it was too easy. I had gone through all the trouble to download ispell, and make completely ignored me and took it straight from the cdrom (how rude :) In one word: Wow! I do have a small suggestion (I haven't tried this, so it may already exist). I noticed that make uses a `work' directory to compile in. How about making it so that if make finds the file system read-only and is unable to create a work directory, it defaults to (for example) `/tmp/.work'. That way, the casual ports user can do mount /cdrom cd /cdrom/ports/textproc/ispell make british install ... cd umount /cdrom No need to place a rather chunky ports distribution on your system. Does the ports collection already do this? Groetjes, Kees Jan ---------------------------------------------------------------v-- Kees Jan Koster tel: UK-1227-453157 e-mail: kjk1@ukc.ac.uk 15 St. Michaels Road, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom ------------------------------------------------------------------ from trials come errors... from errors come legends...