scope of FreeBSD-utilities

From: Lexi Winter <lexi_at_le-fay.org>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2024 18:36:06 UTC
hello,

this week i've been submitting a few patches to move things out of
FreeBSD-utilities.  this is the 'catch all' package that everything gets
added to if it doesn't belong to another package, so as a result it
contains a lot of random crap that clearly shouldn't be there, simply
because no one has gotten around to moving it to the right package yet.

i've been trying to address this, but i wanted to clarify what exactly
should be in its own package, and what should in FreeBSD-utilities, and
if perhaps we need some additional packages.

i briefly discussed this with manu on IRC who said that the basic idea
is that one package should constitute a definable 'subsystem' rather
than a single binary, which i agree with, but let me mention a few
examples i'm unsure about:

- mlxcontrol, mprutil, mpsutil, mptutil - these are utilities for
  managing various SCSI/SAS/RAID controllers.  should each of these be
  in their own package (following the example of e.g. cxgbe-tools) or
  should there be a single package for 'HBA controller utilities'?  i am
  leaning towards the former, but this means we'll end up with a few
  packages containing only a single binary + manpage.

- awk, grep, bc, dc, cal, etc. - i am inlined to leave these in
  FreeBSD-utilities on the basis that these are actually 'utilities' and
  having a single package that provides all of them is quite useful - or
  at least will be once everything else has been moved out of
  -utilities so the package is a bit smaller.

- mt, rmt - these are niche utilities; if you have a tape drive they're
  essential, but the vast majority of users don't have a tape drive.  so
  should these be in their own package?

there are more examples like this but hopefully these illustrate the
basic issues.

i'm happy to continue submitting PRs using my best judgement for this,
but to avoid wasting anyone's time (including mine!) i thought it might
be useful to have a discussion about the preferred way forward here.