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Date:      Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:25:02 -0500
From:      Alex Goncharov <alex-goncharov@comcast.net>
To:        Beech Rintoul <beech@freebsd.org>
Cc:        pauls@utdallas.edu, youshi10@u.washington.edu, freebsd-ports@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: (Very) bogus package dependencies
Message-ID:  <E1J0oRC-0003P1-1q@[24.61.20.41]>
In-Reply-To: <200712071522.54401.beech@freebsd.org> (message from Beech Rintoul on Fri, 7 Dec 2007 15:22:43 -0900)
References:  <E1J0Q3W-0000NQ-D9@[24.61.20.41]> <1AC13EBE9864074E09913258@utd59514.utdallas.edu> <48377132-3BFB-4514-9DB6-BD7F414390AD@u.washington.edu> <200712071522.54401.beech@freebsd.org>

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,--- Garrett Cooper (Fri, 7 Dec 2007 15:42:38 -0800) ----*
| Indeed. There's a lot of work put in by a lot of pkg/ports  
| maintainers to ensure that stuff works out of the box with as little  
| work / maintenance knowledge on the end-user portion as possible, and  
| in the long run not having to keep track of a billion different  
| options and/or other 'useless' information is the correct way to go  
| IMHO.
`--------------------------------------------------------*
,--- You=Beech (Fri, 7 Dec 2007 15:22:43 -0900) ----*
| Lets not forget the developers who make up portmgr. They support and 
| guide us also keeping the whole project going in the same (relative) 
| direction, insuring that all of the ports build and install in the 
| same way. This further lessens the burdon on users who "just want it 
| to work". They have the unenviable task of actually building close to 
| 90,000 ports for the new releases. They also actively maintain the 
| software that keeps track of all these dependencies. As you have seen 
| the dependencies from just one port can become complicated. Imagine 
| trying to map all 18,000 ports in the tree. Our system isn't perfect, 
| but it's constantly being improved.

I am speaking as a relatively new (about two years, on and off)
FreeBSD user -- a grateful user.

It actually keeps amazing me how fast things move in into the ports
collection once they are available anywhere in the world and how
robust they are.  A most recent example -- `xf86-video-radeonhd'
package.  Its (truly important for some video cards' users, like me)
update made it into the ports on about the second day after it got
available from SuSe (?) developers.  It really changed my everyday
experience, making a luxurious display work luxuriously, indeed.  Same
thing with `opera', `emacs' -- everything.

So, if I may address the portmgr developers: Thank you!

| I'll take our port/pkg system over any of the other *nix systems.

Well, I just took it over Debian, as I mentioned, which I think can be
taken over any of the other *nix package systems (FreeBSD ports/pkg
excluded, of course ;-)...

Thanks,

-- Alex -- alex-goncharov@comcast.net --

/*
 * Shedenhelm's Law:
 * 	All trails have more uphill sections
 * 	than they have downhill sections.
 */




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