Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:21:03 -0600 From: Paul Schmehl <pauls@utdallas.edu> To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: (Very) bogus package dependencies Message-ID: <F84B28044B3CF9F18F4DF8CB@utd59514.utdallas.edu> In-Reply-To: <475D4E30.2030403@icyb.net.ua> References: <E1J0Q3W-0000NQ-D9@[24.61.20.41]> <1197264183.00839056.1197250802@10.7.7.3> <475D4E30.2030403@icyb.net.ua>
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--On Monday, December 10, 2007 16:33:20 +0200 Andriy Gapon <avg@icyb.net.ua> wrote: > >> From a small research it seems that the only thing needed from cdrtools > is isoinfo utility which gets called in FreeBSD-specific code > (hald/freebsd/probing/probe-volume.c) like follows: > isoinfo -p -i %s > And it seems that its only usage is to detect presence of directories > named 'VIDEO_TS|VCD|SVCD', so that properties like > volume.disc.is_videodvd could be set. > > Maybe there is a way to write code for this functionality that could be > included into hal source code or as a port patch, so that hal doesn't > have to depend on cdrtools. While I have no objections to this particular suggestion, my question would be - where do you stop? You could easily do this for hundreds (if not thousands of ports) that depend upon some other port because of one piece of code. In general. port maintainers follow the guidelines of the software developer. If the developer states that the software depends upon cdrtools, then the maintainer is going to include that dependency in the port. Many of us don't have sufficient skill to audit code and determine where a dependency could be replaced by some additional code. So, while this might make sense in isolated cases, I don't think it scales well. Furthermore, modern machines generally have enough disc space that the addition of a few "unused" ports to include necessary code is a small price to pay to distribute the load of providing ports over a larger population of volunteers. (And yes, I know not everyone has a modern machine or large discs to work with.) -- Paul Schmehl (pauls@utdallas.edu) Senior Information Security Analyst The University of Texas at Dallas http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/
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