From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Apr 13 08:16:24 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from green.homeunix.org (freefall.freebsd.org [216.136.204.21]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 138E016A4CE; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 08:16:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (green@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by green.homeunix.org (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id i3DFGMJA078941; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 11:16:22 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from green@green.homeunix.org) Message-Id: <200404131516.i3DFGMJA078941@green.homeunix.org> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.6.3 04/04/2003 with nmh-1.0.4 To: Garance A Drosihn In-Reply-To: Message from Garance A Drosihn From: "Brian F. Feldman" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 11:16:22 -0400 Sender: green@green.homeunix.org cc: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Second "RFC" on pkg-data idea for ports X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:16:24 -0000 There are distinct advantages to separating content in different files: the Unix way is for each tool to do a job and do it well, and this PkgData tool would be doing many jobs that would otherwise be done well by single tools operating on each type of data (pkg-plist, distinfo, patch, ...). This does not mean that I believe the proposal to be a bad idea: I think it is a good idea as a separate "source package" tree generated from the "ports" tree. The ports tree just really isn't all that big for modern disks, and certainly it does not seem to be growing faster than disks either. Saving this disk space will cost us ease of use in creating and updating ports, certainly, because the developer cannot simply type "diff file{.orig,file} > patchfile" and be finished with it. Searching through UNINSTALLED ports, I often want to find out what port would have a certain file in its PLIST, and I also would not be able to just grep ^whatever ports/foo/*/pkg-plist in the common, single-plist case. Of course, the tool wouldn't make it that much harder to do something similar, but it would be twice the typing. I'm not sure I understand why you don't just go all the way and embed it in the Makefile. Is it because make(1) is "slow"? Since pkg/COMMENT turned into pkg-comment and then COMMENT= in the Makefile, it's not hard to imagine the same could be done for pkg/DESCR -> pkg-descr -> DESCR=, pkg/PLIST -> pkg-plist -> PLIST=, and then every port would only be a single file. Heck, even if Makefile became, itself, the XML PkgData file that defines everything in every port, it's not like there couldn't be a portmake(1) that did "PkgData --Makefile" and called make(1) with all the rest of its arguments except doing a file descriptor redirection or temporary file redirection and adding a -f . Then you could even remove the port directories themselves except for the top level and save how much space? What you're proposing is a VERY large infrastructure change, in my opinion. If you're going to do it, you might as well go all the way and make every single port become a single PkgData file. Is there some reason you would stop where you did other than just to keep the Makefile separate? This is a very slippery slope. I don't think ports should be an XML package definition -- that's just not the BSD way. Anything making porting more difficult is going to result in loss of ports developers, and I can't see how the proposed idea makes anything easier. Also, what does this gain that on-the-fly-extraction of a single ports/foo/bar/everything-but-Makefile.tbz does not? That seems like something far easier to do that would save even more space at the expense of making "cleanup" more diffiult. If I've gotten completely the wrong idea, please explain to me what I'm missing. I just feel there are more fun, pressing problems in the ports tree to solve than space savings, and time is better spent there than saving disk space for what seems like the minority of ports users that do not use packages directly. -- Brian Fundakowski Feldman \'[ FreeBSD ]''''''''''\ <> green@FreeBSD.org \ The Power to Serve! \ Opinions expressed are my own. \,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,\