Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 22:08:39 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey <chuckr@picnic.mat.net> To: Satoshi - Ports Wraith - Asami <asami@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: tg@ihf.rwth-aachen.de, ports@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: new categories: java, irc, x11-servers Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9906242207380.393-100000@picnic.mat.net> In-Reply-To: <199906250201.TAA83085@silvia.hip.berkeley.edu>
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On Thu, 24 Jun 1999, Satoshi - Ports Wraith - Asami wrote: > * From: Thomas Gellekum <tg@ihf.rwth-aachen.de> > > * What do you plan here? I think this is more important than creating > * new top-level categories. I'd really prefer something like, e. g., > * > * lang/java > * lang/c > * lang/misc > * games/solitaire > * games/multiplayer > * games/amusements > * games/minesweepers > * games/misc > * net/www > * net/news > * net/irc > * net/misc > * x11/wm > * x11/servers > * x11/toolkits > * x11/misc > * > * over the current collection of directories. > * > * What would be needed apart from major surgery in the repository? If you guys are talking major surgery, someone ought to consider the fact that the sheer number of directories is the silliest thing under the sun. > > One thing to remember is that currently the biggest problem is the > size of some of the subdirectories, not the number of directories in > the toplevel. Here is the current top ten (including CVS directories > and such, so I might be off by a couple): > > japanese/ 253 > net/ 224 > games/ 215 > devel/ 169 > graphics/ 137 > www/ 111 > misc/ 109 > x11/ 108 > lang/ 106 > mail/ 90 > > Moving x11-* to under x11, www/news etc. to under net and a newly > split java into under lang will make the whole thing look a little > neater but there's not where our problem were anyway. > > That said, there are several major issues here: > > (1) More disagreements on what's the right categorization. Everyone > has his/her own idea of what's a good categorization, and now we > have just tossed in categorization of categories into the mix. > For instance, does mail go under net, or does it stay in the > toplevel? Do we make a new toplevel to put converters and > textproc together, or do they stay separate? > > Do we put Japanese editors under japanese/editors or > editors/japanese? What do we do about Korean web browsers? Do we > go for three intermediate levels, like korean/net/www or just use > korean/www (or korean/net)? Or maybe we should collect all the > natural language support stuff under one toplevel. Then we are > going to have nls/korean/net/www for symmetry (!?) with net/www. > And maybe lang, devel etc. should really be under "computers" so > they won't be confused with natural languages and developing > nations. > > Etc., etc. Basically this is not really a can of worms I'd like > to open right now. ;) > > (2) Is our goal to have a tree where all leaves are at the same level, > or can they be different? (The former actually makes it much > easier to do a quick search in the entire tree -- try doing a > "find . -name Makefile | xargs grep ..." on a tree with several > large work directories.) > > If it's the former, is going for another level really going to > help? Looking at the top ten list above, it will help for > japanese, games, graphics and maybe devel. But www and mail are > just going to move directly under net. > > Also, if it's the former, do we go to three (or whatever) levels > all at once or start by converting some of the bigger ones first? > This could have a major impact on what's needed to change in the > framework and the time the tree has to frozen to accomplish this. > (Not to mention all the cgi scripts and stuff out there that > assume the ports tree is only two levels....) > > (3) Does it really make it easier for people to find ports they want? > Ok, games/solitaire and games/minesweeper are fairly obvious, but > where do multiplayer fantasy games go if there are both > games/multiplayer and games/fastasy? Isn't what we want a better > search mechanism and a database, not more structure? > > (4) And of course all the technical issues of bsd.port.*mk and others > assuming the depth of the tree. But these shouldn't be too hard > to fix. The only one I can think of offhand is some > Template/README.* files assuming all the leaves are at the same > level and there is only one level of intermediate directories in > between. > > Basically, all the evidence above points to us needing a more > asymmetric tree and a better search mechanism (both for ports for > users and Makefile/PLIST type files for porters). A simple move to > three levels is not really going to solve any of the above. > > -PW > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message > ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@picnic.mat.net | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 213 Lakeside Drive Apt T-1 | Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run picnic and jaunt, both FreeBSD-current. (301) 220-2114 | ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message
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