Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:58:04 -0700 From: Chris Telting <christopher-ml@telting.org> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Port dependencies Message-ID: <4D96668C.3090406@telting.org>
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Just in a thoughtful mood and thought I'd to the question to the cloud. One of my biggest gripes with the ports system is dependency hell. Ports link against so my optional components and pull them into the install. Libraries and components are built based on make file defines. But this doesn't have to be so. It's possible and easy enough to check a running system for which libraries are installed and only if a feature is enabled to load the library. The number of console programs that want to pull in X window or kde is my boggling. Knowing how to program myself when I see a "make config" menu on every single port it makes me want to cry. I think the "make config" menus should have everything checked by default and only be provided to prevent things from being compiled such as for embedded devices. My question is why is this so? Why can't programs do more run time configuration? Is a configuration run time system library needed to make it easier? Chris
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