Date: 20 Sep 2002 20:19:46 -0700 From: John Merryweather Cooper <john_m_cooper@yahoo.com> To: FreeBSD Ports <freebsd-ports@freebsd.org> Cc: Joe Clarke <marcus@marcuscom.com> Subject: A modest proposal for making sense of browser plugin ports Message-ID: <1032578387.750.125.camel@PC016247.reshall.uidaho.edu>
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First, for browsers which are both very similar and can share plugins,
it would be really wonderful if one such port was designated as the
"plugin install port" and the other's plugins directory was a symlink to
the main install directory. I'm thinking particularly of www/mozilla
and www/mozilla-devel. There's no reason these two ports couldn't share
their plugins directories by symlink.
As a slight extension of this, hier() could be modified to have a
designated browser plugin directory (with appropriate bifurcation for
linux browsers/plugins to prevent "branding" clashes). Then, symlinks
would be used to install "copies" of the plugin binary for particular
browser. My experience with Mozilla and Netscape is that they would
support this configuration, and I think the rest would do. This avoids
the alternative, which is detecting installed browsers by each plugin,
and then install myriad binaries all up and down the tree. Instead, the
browser would "scan" the designated plugin directory and symlink into
it's own plugin directory. This would also avoid the need to have a
particular browser as a dependency of plugin ports; the browser port
would know where plugins are installed and take care of it
instead--perhaps with even a install-plugins target that could be
refeshed if desired.
Second, standardize all browser plugin ports to have an install-user
target and a WANT_USER_PLUGIN_ONLY handle to control whether a
system-wide install takes place. Mozilla, netscape, and Opera for sure
allow plugins to be installed in a subdirectory of the user's HOME. I
can see configuration where a system-wide install would be less than
desirable, but a user-by-user install would be desired.
Third, alternatively, the plugin ports can do the work and: detect the
installed browsers, install binaries so all compatible (and installed)
browsers are enabled, and handle the pkg-plist issues.
Or Fourth, something completely different . . .
--
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