Re: We need to do something about build times

Daniel Engberg wrote on 2023/10/28 17:48:
> If upstream uses GNU Autotools, use upstream release archives as they
> usually contains a configure script ready to run which means that you
> can avoid USES= autoreconf which is slow and adds unncessary
> dependencies.

This has the following problem

Apply patches to {configure.ac,Makefile.am} and run autoreconf
  versus
Apply patches to {configure,Makefile.in} and run ./configure immediately

Incidentally, some ports (e.g. security/heimdal*) do not know which it is.

> If dependencies are unbundled you can save I/O and processing time by
> not extracting.
> 
> Example:
> https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/tree/net-mgmt/netdata/Makefile#n32

With -X (or --exclude-from) of tar, a list of unwanted files can be made into a file.
If the file is subject to SUB_FILES, the options also allow selection of unnecessary files.
... I have thought about this for a moment.
It was impossible because the timing when SUB_FILES is extracted is much later than when it is possible to do so.

Regards.