Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 16:18:57 +0100 From: cpghost <cpghost@cordula.ws> To: "Aryeh M. Friedman" <aryeh.friedman@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering (Repost from -ports@) Message-ID: <20071203161857.15048b57@epia-2.farid-hajji.net> In-Reply-To: <47541063.4010101@gmail.com> References: <47541063.4010101@gmail.com>
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On Mon, 03 Dec 2007 09:19:15 -0500 "Aryeh M. Friedman" <aryeh.friedman@gmail.com> wrote: > [Repost from -ports@] [Please don't cross-post from questions@ to stable@ and current@...] > 3. What is the single best aspect of the current system? That you can add custom patches to the csup-ped ports tree. > 4. What is the single worst aspect of the current system? Actually a few points: * Some ports lag behind current versions quite a lot while others are diligently updated as upstream does so. We need more port maintainers for those less-often updated ports. * gcc's performance for C++ is dismal: compiling big ports like Firefox/Thunderbird, JDKs, KDE/Qt, OpenOffice takes AGES, esp. on older and slower hardware. This is particularly painful when those ports undergo only very minor revisions. * portupgrade's/pkgdb requires way too much user-input to fix dependencies etc..; it's not a problem for experienced users, but newbies don't know how to reply to pkgdb's cryptic questions. I wished instructions for portmaster were added to those for portupgrade in /usr/ports/UPDATING more often. * Python ports are not versioned. When multiple versions of Python are installed simultaneously, it should be possible to install py24-* and py25-* ... ports simultaneously too. What I'd really wish to see happen: versioned ports! Say, you need portcategory/foobar-x.y.z for some reason, it would be nice to: # cd /usr/ports/portcategory/foobar # make -DVERSION=x.y.z install clean If at all possible, it would be also great to have multiple versions of the same ports available. We already have that for some selected ports, but it wold be interesting to have a more general solution. Of course, this requires a way to declare one of those versions the "default version" (that would e.g. set symlinks for includes, libs etc from generic to the current version of the selected port). > 8. How long have you used FreeBSD and/or UNIX in general? 20+ years. > 9. That is your primary use(s) for your FreeBSD machine(s) (name > upto 3)? Server farm + Desktops. Main development platform. > 10. Assuming there is no functional difference what is your preferred > installation method for 3rd party software? The current system is excellent. It could use some slight tweaks here and there, but overall, it is very usable and I'm quite happy with it, despite its (unavoidable) shortcomings. Regards, -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/
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