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Date:      Fri, 3 Jul 1998 16:04:57 -0600 (MDT)
From:      Atipa <freebsd@atipa.com>
To:        dannyman <dannyman@dannyland.org>
Cc:        "Daniel O'Connor" <doconnor@gsoft.com.au>, freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: New ports scheme
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.980703155347.3336B-100000@altrox.atipa.com>
In-Reply-To: <19980703174558.C6665@enteract.com>

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> On Fri, Jul 03, 1998 at 01:05:54PM +0930, Daniel O'Connor wrote:
> > 
> > > > maybe we might consider having more than one directory level?  like
> > > > net/irc/bitchx, net/ftp/ncftp3, etc ... ?
> 
> > > Sounds good, except that many ports would be their entire "Application
> > > Type" group. I like the idea though; add more sorting heuristics, based 3
> > > layers deep: 
> 
> > Hmm.. if they're all ogoing to be tar.gz's anyway, my not put them in a
> > signle directory and use a simple DB to keep track of them. That way you can
> > have one port in multiple categories..
> 
> It might be irritating to have a directory on one's system containing 30,000
> files, or even 1500 files ... especially if you're the FTP server distrbuting
> the files in question ... we do imagine a day when FreeBSD has really taken
> off and the ports collection has grown to an awesome, scarey size, and we've
> planned for it to scale happily, ya? :)

Well, the whole argument is scalability vs. usability. A single SQL db
would be really nice for the user, but not very nice for developers and
updates, unless we made some really nice tools. I do not know if people
want the extra bloat of a DB application running on their machine just to
manage ports. :)

(ASIDE - I think RedHat is moving toward integrating a lot of their
management stuff to PostgreSQL... interesting... ) 
 
> A DB would still be nice.  "Multiple categories" could be kludged into the fs
> with symlinks. :)

Yes. I guess you'd need to establish precedence, but that wouldn't be a
big problem.

> Of course, with a DB interface, there's no compelling reason to keep
> several hundred tarballs on your system in the first place. ;)  

Except that you can use fs tools (ls, etc.) to scan through them, and
don't need anything more. Once again, a custom UI would be really cool and
great for scalability, but we need to decide what resources must be
present (X11, http, curses, etc.) to read the DB. Being able to use normal
tools is a nice last resort in case those aren't available. I think all
port management should be available from the command line (cat, tar, gzip,
ls, etc.), but have a nice front end for convenience.

I think the tarball idea gives us a bit more time, but I agree that it is
not the most scalable solution. Ideas?

Kevin


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