FreeBSD problems and preliminary ways to solve

[Vadim Goncharov]

Hi Marcin Wisnicki! 

On Mon, 22 Aug 2011 18:33:45 +0000 (UTC); Marcin Wisnicki wrote about 'Re: FreeBSD problems and preliminary ways to solve':

>>>1) No pkg and pkg-devel versions. The -devel version is headers, static
>>>   libs, programmer examples, etc. not needed in production (we could
>>>   say this part is what is actually depended on in B-deps).
>> 
>> Xorg is partially broken up in this way.  In general, it is up to the
>> ports' maintainers to do this - the FreeBSD project just hosts the ports
>> infrastructure, it's up to maintainers to supply and maintain the actual
>> ports.  Note that requiring both pkg and pkg-devel versions of ports
>> significantly increases maintainer effort for little (to them) perceived
>> value.  Also, I find having separate pkg and pkg-devel versions a real
>> PITA - I regularly find that information i need is missing from the pkg
>> file and I have to dig out the missing files.
>> 
>> Out of interest, what is the rationale behind this requirement.
> I too find lack of -devel packages as one of freebsd strengths not 
> weaknesses.
> Such separation is also very specific to certain languages like C/C++.
> However to provide a middle-ground solution I once proposed installation 
> filters based on patterns, which would give ability to not have unwanted 
> files essentially for free (just small changes in pkg_* and ports/Mk).
> For example there could be a standard filter group called "devel" that 
> includes "include/**" and "lib/**.a".

That's simple, but won't work for all cases. For example, aforementioned
example of glib and perl will nit be catched. Also, this exclusion is blind:
it's better for maintainer to flag group of files as not needed.

> Packages would have ability to exclude/include additional files to any 
> group if needed using pkg-plist directives.
> Similar patterns could be defined for docs, localizations, etc.
> User would set which groups of files he wants to exclude during 
> installation or after it.

That's sounds more like OPTIONS and more likely will work.

-- 
WBR, Vadim Goncharov. ICQ#166852181       mailto:vadim_nuclight at mail.ru
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