Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 11:39:53 -0500 From: pauls@utdallas.edu To: ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Has the port collection become to large to handle. Message-ID: <183377CF4293A752066EF095@paul-schmehls-powerbook59.local> In-Reply-To: <p06230939c08c16a1821f@[128.113.24.47]> References: <MIEPLLIBMLEEABPDBIEGIEPBHGAA.fbsd@a1poweruser.com> <p06230939c08c16a1821f@[128.113.24.47]>
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--==========2F55E388CCB417CD7204========== Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline --On May 13, 2006 7:18:16 PM -0400 Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> = wrote: > At 2:28 PM -0400 5/13/06, fbsd wrote: >> To all question list readers; >> >> Now with 14576 ports in the collection where do you >> draw the line that its too large to be downloading >> the whole collection when you just use 10 or 20 of >> them? > > This is a good question. For all those people who want > to roll their eyes and ignore this question, please > answer it. Where *DO* you draw the line? Obviously it's > not at 10,000 ports. Will it be 20,000? 50,000? How > many programs exist? Will every single program known to > man eventually be in the ports collection? How hopeless > is that? And if not, then "Where do you draw the line?". > I must confess to some confusion here. I don't have any boxes (and most of = mine are headless servers) that have only 10 or 20 ports installed. (Cvsup = alone has two dependencies, so you'll have three ports installed just to=20 keep ports up to date.) Most of my servers have over 100 installed ports=20 at least. My workstation is close to 490. Furthermore, the *entire* ports = tree, **up-to-date**, consumes 329MB of space (without distfiles). In the=20 days when you can buy 20GB hard drives for $10 US, how can this be a=20 problem? The purpose of the ports collection is to make available to FreeBSD users=20 programs that they might find useful. The more programs there are=20 available, the wider the audience that is attracted to FreeBSD.=20 Furthermore, a port wouldn't even exist in FreeBSD unless at least *one*=20 person was interested enough in it to become the creator and maintainer of=20 that port. The price *you* pay for keeping your ports up to date is very minor - 10=20 minutes a day (max) updating through CVS and 329MB of hard drive space.=20 And if you have to pay for bandwidth use, you only need to cvsup right=20 before you have to install or upgrade a port. Yet this suggestions is - lets make the system infinitely more complex so=20 that a handful of people who dislike having to use that 329MB and do CVSup=20 occasionally don't have to deal with it. Does that make sense to you?=20 Personally, I would rather burden that handful of people by making them do=20 customization than to punish the entire community to satisfy their request. I *do* think tracking downloads would be valuable, *if* there's a way to=20 implement it and aggregate the data. Knowing how many times a particular=20 port is installed might open more than a few eyes. The problem is, you'd=20 have to have accurate stats from *every* mirror and those would have to be=20 aggregated and collated. Not a big problem, for sure, but still, more work = for somebody who's already a volunteer. But knowing how many times a=20 port's distfile was fetched and how many times it was upgraded would be=20 useful information. The problem is, it would require some sort of "ping" to FreeBSD that=20 included useful data, because, once the base port is installed (which is=20 somewhere between 8 and 40K normally), the install is going to pull the=20 distfile from the MASTER_SITE, which could be one of twenty or thirty=20 different sites. This "ping" could also include information such as which=20 mirror sites are out of date or off-line. I get the sense that tracking=20 this would not be too hard, because the "intelligence" already exists=20 within ports, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to tackle the problem. Paul Schmehl (pauls@utdallas.edu) Adjunct Information Security Officer The University of Texas at Dallas http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/ --==========2F55E388CCB417CD7204==========--
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