Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2018 05:52:17 +0000 From: bugzilla-noreply@freebsd.org To: x11@FreeBSD.org Subject: [Bug 230837] x11-servers/xorg-server: make install fails for xorg-server-1.18.4_9,1 Message-ID: <bug-230837-7141-mtlo4TX9nf@https.bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/> In-Reply-To: <bug-230837-7141@https.bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/> References: <bug-230837-7141@https.bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/>
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https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3D230837 --- Comment #10 from Adrian Bocaniciu <a.bocaniciu@computer.org> --- (In reply to Niclas Zeising from comment #9) I do not agree that "this has always been done so" is an acceptable answer = to "this is wrong". Of course I am perfectly aware that any maintainer of an open source project can work for that only a limited time and I completely agree that he is fre= e to decide that various possible improvements are not worth the effort to imple= ment them. Nevertheless, the fact that someone cannot improve something should not pre= vent him to recognize the defects of the current solution. All the package managers used by the various Linux distribution have their origins in the ports system of FreeBSD/NetBSD, but they have introduced var= ious improvements and now they are much more convenient than their ancient ances= tor. While on several kinds of servers I use FreeBSD, on desktops/laptops I use Gentoo and the methods used by Gentoo for tracking package dependencies and options are now much better than in FreeBSD. In Gentoo, after I give the command of making and installing some "port", I= can usually forget about it and continue with other tasks, because the command = will almost always succeed automatically. Many, many years ago, this was also true in FreeBSD, but now most port upgr= ades have become unbelievably tedious because the port installation is interrupt= ed for a very large number of times, requiring manual intervention and what is worse is that it is unpredictable how many interruptions will happen. Because Firefox was deinstalled when I applied the solution from UPDATING f= or xorg-server, I had to reinstall it. I started the installation a day ago, and it is still not finished, because= the process was interrupted hundreds of time. As I do not have time to watch it continuously, every interruption was solved only when I happened to check f= or progress, which is what caused the installation to not be finished yet. The causes for FreeBSD interruptions: 1. Requests for port options. This is solved in Gentoo by the global "USE" settings, which store the user preferences 2. Request to deinstall ports that cannot be reinstalled without being deinstalled. Such requests happen far more seldom in Gentoo, but when they happen, the list of ports that must be deinstalled is displayed before star= ting the making of the selected port and you can deinstall all of them with a si= ngle command. In FreeBSD it is unpredictable how many times making a port will be interrupted with requests to deinstall another port. 3. Besides the explicit requests to deinstall some ports, making a port can fail a very large number of times and the solution is also to deinstall some other port, but the inadequate system of checking the port dependencies fai= l to recognize the need for deinstallation and gives extremely confusing error messages instead. For example, during making firefox, the worst offender was the failure to m= ake docbook-utils. While there was an entry in UPDATING for deleting some ports before updating docbook, the list given there was not complete, so I had to spend a lot of time while making docbook-utils failed more than ten times w= ith obscure error message that were removed one by one by deinstalling some oth= er had to discover port. In conclusion doing things as they have always been done has become worse a= nd worse. You may not have the power to do anything about it, but the existing deficiencies must be recognized. --=20 You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.=
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