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David Wood wrote:
| [Additional CCs added by Aryeh noted, but left untouched]
I removed the OP, Simon and Mezz since this has nothing to boost any
more and I changed the Alex Ryba cc to Alejandro Pulver because the
first was a misaddressing on my part
|
| I wanted to retitle this post, but couldn't come up with a summary of
what I was trying to say.
I think the subject now fits better
|
|
| In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Aryeh M. Friedman
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
|> I am top posting because my comments are general and not in
relationship to any given point. I think Mezz along with Simon both
the right way to handle it for now. There are several projects that I
am not directly involved designed to tackle this sort of issue with
ports 2.0 being the right long term solution but not needed to solve
this issue per se so I will not discuss it here. Most of the projects
can be found on Ale's PortsToDo wiki (wiki.freebsd.org/PortsToDo) the
main one not found on there is Jim Staplton's virtual ports DB (which I
think is either in the committ queue or should be since both me an Ale
have signed off on it as being a good idea). The issue is really not
the infrastruct as you state but the more patchs like this we make the
more likely it is the infrastruct will become problematic down the road.
|
| Forgive me, Aryeh, but you've taken a specific point I made and
dismissed it saying that "the infrastructure needs a complete overhaul
and I'm the right person to head that work", though you have
acknowledged that there is other work going on.
We seem to have a fundimental failure to communicate. I was saying
*SPECFICALLY* that ports 2.0 (at least as currently envisioned) was not
the right way to handle this for the time bing (only that if and when
ports 2.0 does become adopted that it needs to handle such situations as
well or better then the current system).... my original comment was made
solely as a user of ports that depend on boost and a desire to make it
so there was no python wackiness (which Simon's and Mezz's suggestion
does just fine).
As to other people's work odds are that the very core of Ports 2.0 is
going to be based on a concept put forward by Ondrej Fischer (I will
leave it to him to discuss the details) and Ports 2.0 *ONLY* refers to
item 5 in Ale's todo list (which is less then 10% of the total list)
|
| I know you will argue you aren't making a reply to my post, so why
didn't you trim all my text instead of quoting it? I believe you are
replying - and that your reply is pretty close to being non sequitur.
You're the one who attempted to put words into my mouth (totally without
cause or instigation) by attempting to make a linkage between my concern
about a given current port and my other work in the ports system in
general. The two are completely unrelated.
|
| I am not interested in pointless points scoring; I have better things
to do. What I want to do is understand the issue..
|
|
| I am no committer - just a mere ports maintainer. Freshports doesn't
dig up any ports you maintain, at least not with an email address
beginning with aryeh or containing fried.
Since I work closely with Ale who is a committer for book keeping
simplicity he is the maintainer of record for several ports we
co-maintain: devel/aegis, devel/thistest (besides I wrote the
underlaying application), and sysutils/fusefs-ntfs
|
| I do not believe that this problem is one that brings into question
the whole infrastructure. It certainly isn't "the more patchs (sic) that
we make the more likely it is that the infrastruct (sic) will become
problematic down the road". Not all evolutionary software engineering is
bad, especially if modules are rewritten when appropriate. Of course I
accept the possibility of 'bit rot' setting in when code has been
through many hands and has many small changes applied. In this case, I
believe that things are getting better, not worse or less maintainable.
Neither do I (at least until we break the 25k ports or so [total
guess]). As to evolutionary software development it is the primary
model I use and one of the things it teaches is to know when the current
design is starting to reach it's limits and change it either by some
structural refactoring (if you are lucky) and/or rewrite of major
subsystems (if your unlucky)... ports 2.0 takes the point of view that
the user level ports system is pretty much good the way it is but the
way depends are handled sucks and that this will evenually make the
system unworkable unless a completely new depend system is developed and
that is why I am always refering to "Recursive Make Considered Harmful"
|
| This problem was known about some while back and there's no need to do
any fresh engineering. The delay in having a solution available was the
need for changes in the base system to support bsd.options.mk. Base
system changes mean waiting until all versions of FreeBSD that lack the
necessary support are End of Life. After 31 May, ports will be able to
process their options and set a dependency on python before including
bsd.pre.port.mk.
Please take your head out of "Aryeh is evil" and see my comments for
what they where (an attempt to ask if the solution was implemented visa
vie boost and boost only!)
|
| A simple and elegant solution will soon be available to solve what is
essentially a circular dependency at the moment.
It is already solved if you read the reply from simon.
|
|
|
| I see two issues here, both stemming from the complexities of
dependency between ports. Firstly, there's a need to look for the best
possible solutions with the tools we have now as well as to look for
continuing improvement. Secondly, there's the need to educate both
maintainers and administrators on how best to handle the complexities
that can occur.
|
| I think everyone would agree that the current documentation isn't the
best. In stating this, I believe I'm restating Mark Linimon's well known
criticism of the current Porters' Handbook. It is not my intention to
hurt anyone by what I say. The way out of this is, of course, for people
to pay attention to the documentation - but those best placed to do that
are some of the busiest people already within the FreeBSD project.
Having worked alongside technical authors, I realise what a specialist
(and impressive) skill set they have.
This is a non-Ports 2.0 work item already on Ale's todo list spefically
to create a more general guide then the porters handbook (his working
title is the ports handbook) which is meant for both maintainers and admins.
|
| At the moment, it is hard for a maintainer to discover current best
practice. I suspect this is partly why the same issue is handled in
different ways by different ports (as I mentioned above with Kerberos).
Meanwhile, it is hard for system administrators to discover how best to
use the richness of ports.
I doubt if anyone ever even attempted to compile a best practices list
(one Ale's goals with the porters guide). As to your assertion that
all we need is to make maintainers aware of complexities is ass
backwards if you ask me when such complexities are symptoms of either
bad practices or a bad underlaying system (I personal think it is both)
|
|
| System administrators need the freedom to make whatever decisions they
feel are appropriate (as I said, I wouldn't want ports unnecessarily
depending on OpenSSL or the Cyrus SASL library). However, features that
help administrators manage this richness, such as portconf, are not that
well known about, especially by the less technical users.
|
|
|
| Aryeh - you seem to have something against slave ports. At times, they
are very useful. They make the creation and maintenance of client/server
ports easy - for example, databases/mysql50-client is a slave port of
databases/mysql50-server.
In theory I have nothing against them since they are the best we can do
with the current system, *BUT* maintainers all too often inadvertently
create problems with them such as the old boost did.
|
| The reason for both my posts is a feeling that you haven't understood
*why* the current situation is as it is, Aryeh. A reply along the lines
of "we're working on a complete replacement of the whole infrastructure,
and that will solve it" doesn't help with understanding the specific
issue that has arisen. You can't offer any guarantee that your new
system will solve all the problems - especially if you do not take the
time to understand the weaknesses in the current system as well as its
strengths.
I think your the one who misunderstood completely by some how assuming I
was pushing a non-maintstream agenda (which I agree ports 2.0 currently
is) instead of simple making a request as user of a specific port.
|
| If you bring forward coherent proposals and a proof of concept for
Ports 2.0, I will certainly give what input I can at that stage. For
now, we live with and continue to improve what we have, rather than
looking only to what might replace it if it's found to be better after
careful evaluation.
Depend on what Ondrej Fischer feels about discussing his work we can
start to put forward such concrete stuff right now (the design is 99%
done we are just testing the underlaying alrogithms)
|
|
| Maintainers have to work with OPTIONS as they are. They are a valuable
feature, even if they don't offer all the functionality wished for.
Where the (*&(* did you get the impression I was against OPTIONS and/or
gnobs?
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