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Date:      Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:56:52 -0800
From:      Garrett Cooper <youshi10@u.washington.edu>
To:        Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
Cc:        Ade Lovett <ade@freebsd.org>, Steven Kreuzer <stevenkreuzer@yahoo.com>, freebsd-ports@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Limitations of Ports System
Message-ID:  <291C2604-2EDD-412E-9108-2ADD7D4D9F68@u.washington.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20071213111050.O6078@wonkity.com>
References:  <475F7390.9090509@gmail.com> <1022BEDA-8641-4686-AB1A-3FE2D688F47F@FreeBSD.org> <475FAC1F.1010401@gmail.com> <19341C6C-BF3A-4DFD-B8DF-87F4E92B0335@FreeBSD.org> <0F330142-A3CA-4E6E-84BD-FDE55A8E3AEE@yahoo.com> <20071213111050.O6078@wonkity.com>

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On Dec 13, 2007, at 10:17 AM, Warren Block wrote:

> On Thu, 13 Dec 2007, Steven Kreuzer wrote:
>
>> This thread was called "results of ports re-engineering survey"  
>> but I figured I would start a new thread.
>
> Rightly so.
>
>> On Dec 12, 2007, at 6:45 AM, Ade Lovett wrote:
>>> We *know* it can be done better.  We *know* the scaling limits of  
>>> the current system, and most of us are completely amazed it even  
>>> still works.
>>> If y'all want to make a difference, concepts and ideas we have  
>>> plenty of. Code talks.
>>
>> Out of curiosity, are any of these shortcomings documented  
>> anywhere? I have been using ports on my home machine for a long  
>> time and I've never
>> had any problems with it. I assume the issues come into play when  
>> you work with multiple systems you are trying to keep in sync, etc.
>>
>> I would be interested in reading about some of the limitations  
>> people have run into when using ports.
>
> Notable with the new modular Xorg is the speed of changes (install/ 
> deinstall/clean) when there are a lot of ports installed. Before  
> modular xorg, 400 ports installed was a lot.  700 now is not  
> surprising.
>
> Some profiling looking for areas which could benefit from speed  
> optimization would be useful.  That may have already been done but  
> not publicized.
>
> -Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA


My hunch is that part of the problem lies in the fact (unfortunately)  
that everything's done via Makefiles and that there's a lot of  
redundancy to some extent with the operations performed by  
pkg_install and friends (at least from reading and writing the /var/ 
db/pkg* and /usr/ports/INDEX* files are concerned), in particular  
when dealing with non-slave / -master instances, and how make is  
invoking pkg_install(1). I don't have hard evidence to support that  
point though, and until that point is reached my comment is merely  
speculation.

-Garrett



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