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Date:      Sun, 31 May 2009 21:25:33 +0900
From:      Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>
To:        Ulrich =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Sp=F6rlein?= <uqs@spoerlein.net>
Cc:        ports <freebsd-ports@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: make.conf no x option
Message-ID:  <m2ab4twjb6.wl%randy@psg.com>
In-Reply-To: <20090531115151.GC18676@acme.spoerlein.net>
References:  <m2vdnodrq5.wl%randy@psg.com> <20090526113714.GC1043@straylight.m.ringlet.net> <m2r5ycdr6c.wl%randy@psg.com> <20090526120948.GA14134@owl.midgard.homeip.net> <a01628140905260545q149622b9xfbde9fab3c49eef4@mail.gmail.com> <m2ljojelx6.wl%randy@psg.com> <20090526194617.GA16353@owl.midgard.homeip.net> <m2tz37d46c.wl%randy@psg.com> <20090531115151.GC18676@acme.spoerlein.net>

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>>>> i think this whole thing is worth a few days to settle in our heads.
>>>> essentially, if we believe that freebsd is used extensively in
>>>> headless server deployments, we should make that easy and smooth.
>>> But even a headless server can run X clients with the display being on
>>> some other (presumably non-headless) machine. That is on of the
>>> beauties of the X Windowing System.
>> 
>> [ thanks, but i am overly-familiar with the beauties and the some of the
>> warts of x. ]
>> 
>> someone installing a server may or may not want the x client version of
>> a package as opposed to readline or curses.  but, imiho, it would be
>> good to make such decisions centralized, somewhat strong, and pretty
>> clear.
>> 
>>> The only part that would make no sense to install on a headless
>>> machine is the X server itself
>> 
>> and the support for it and the toys it occasionally seems to drag in.
>> 
>> i really do not want the x client versions of emacs, cvsup, ...
>> actually, i can not think of any ports i run on headless machines that i
>> want spawning windows on my glass.  ymmv, of course.
>> 
>> i think that i would like to be able to say headless install and have to
>> ack any port which wants to drag in x.
> 
> First of all, try figuring out which ports got you into the X11 mess. On
> my server I got:
> 
> % pkg_info -R libX11-1.2.1,1
> Information for libX11-1.2.1,1:

my point was specifically that, if we believe that freebsd is used by a
major server population, that having to know/do this kind of cruft is
ill-advised.

randy



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