Second "RFC" on pkg-data idea for ports

[Kris Kennaway]

On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 11:40:59PM -0400, Garance A Drosihn wrote:
> [this is BCC'ed to -hackers and -arch just so everyone has a
>       chance to see it, but I expect the bulk of the discussion
>       should take place on the freebsd-ports mailing list]
> 
> Back in January I send out a long-ish email asking for feedback
> on some ideas I had for the ports-collection.  I received a fair
> number of comments, and have finally re-organized my ideas into
> a few web pages.  Hopefully these will make more sense.
> 
> Initially I had written the ideas up as a bunch of Wiki pages,
> but the machine holding that Wiki died, taking with it all the
> pages I had written...  I have not proof-read the web pages,
> so there's probably some spelling mistakes and odd sentences
> on them.  Apologies for that, but I wanted to get *something*
> sent out this week. This project has been blocked due to a
> lack of time on my part, and I want to get it moving again...
> 
> The basic idea is to collapse many of the separate files for a
> port into a single pkg-data file.  The web pages explain why I
> think this might be worth doing.  Please check them out at:
> 
> http://people.freebsd.org/~gad/PkgData/

Instead of inventing new tools and file formats for this, you could
just use a shar archive to collapse ports into a single file (well,
two, since you'd still need a makefile to extract the shar) and be
done with it.  Personally I have doubts about whether this is
worthwhile since it could complicate the lives of developers, but I'd
have to see a prototype before passing final judgement.

Most of the other stuff you talk about can be done with makefile-based
ports with equivalent effort.

Kris



-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/attachments/20040413/4cce8764/attachment.bin