cvs commit: ports/archivers/hs-zip-archive Makefile distinfo pkg-descr pkg-plist ports/devel/hs-binary Makefile distinfo pkg-descr pkg-plist ports/devel/hs-darcs/files patch-Setup.lhs patch-darcs.cabal ports/devel/hs-darcs Makefile distinfo pkg-d

[Gabor PALI]

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 5:52 PM, Dmitry Marakasov <amdmi3 at amdmi3.ru> wrote:
> What is a purpose of ports collection, if you need to go to a 3rd-party
> website just to find an application you need?

It can be translated to this question: What is a purpose of FreeBSD,
if you need to use 3rd-party applications just to fit it to your
needs?  I think of FreshPorts as a nice (and more user-friendly)
extension to the Ports Collection, and as far as I know it was created
and it is maintained by Dan Langille [1], who plays in the FreeBSD
team (which I do not feel really 3rd-party right because of this).

By the way: have you seen this email:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/cvs-ports/2010-May/195150.html ?
In that sense QAT is just another 3rd-party application we might
say...?


> Actually, you can just do make search, but that not the way to go.

I think you are expecting something like that: the User wants to
install darcs, so the User tries to find out what it can be found.
"Oh, it must be a development tool, so it must be the devel category.
Oh, it is called darcs, so it must be in the darcs directory."  It
covers a nice approach: make the layout consist with the user's
intuition.  If this is your intention I agree with it.  But.  What may
happen in case of a Haskell user?  "Oh, it is a Haskell tool, so it
must be in the haskell category.  Oh, it is a Cabal hackage, so it
must be prefixed with `hs-` like all the other Haskell ports in the
tree.  But there is neither (real) haskell directory nor hs-darcs in
the ports tree.  Where can it be?"  (And you can play this with the
non-Haskell user.)

If I do not find something in the ports tree at the first glance, I
just a do search.  If I still do not find it, I port it :P  But
sometimes it can be tricky: I wanted to port lang/fsharp, but it
turned out that the bsd# has already done port for F# but it was not
present in the ports tree only in their development tree.

I think majority of darcs users are still coming from the Haskell
side, because these applications are mostly advertised in those
circles.  But it is nice to see that others started to use them as
well.


> also to be sure there are not only people developing in haskell, but also plain users of
> those ports.

Thank you for representing them :)


Cheers,
:g

[1] http://www.freshports.org/contact.php