From owner-freebsd-ports  Thu Feb  8 10:18:46 2001
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To: Brian Kraemer <kraemer@u.washington.edu>
Cc: freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Ports updating... Good ways? 
In-Reply-To: Message from Brian Kraemer <kraemer@u.washington.edu> 
   of "Thu, 08 Feb 2001 10:08:45 PST." <Pine.A41.4.21.0102081002450.69276-100000@mead4.u.washington.edu> 
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2001 10:18:13 -0800
Message-ID: <17491.981656293@winston.osd.bsdi.com>
From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com>
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> The major downside of this is that it depends (no pun intended) on the
> user knowing how each dependency should be handled, which they may or may
> not know. However I would think it would make implementing "make update"
> much easier. Even with this user-interaction, I still think it would be a
> big win over updating each port and dependency by hand.

Well, I actually happen to think that this level of automation will be
just enough to land the user in the mud, stranded between two banks.

By this, I'm saying that it's reasonable to assume that the lion's
share of users won't have the faintest idea whether a given port can
be safely Replaced, Augmented or Occluded and those who really *do*
know are also skilled enough to just do it by hand, something many of
those same individuals have already implemented their own automation
for.  If it's an interface as "public" as update, however, then all
you're really guaranteeing is that a bunch of naive users will think
it's the "real" update feature and start leaning too hard on it, to
everyone's general sorrow and despair as the breakage reports start
coming in. :-)

- Jordan


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