Call for feedback on a Ports-collection change

[Sergey Matveychuk]

Garance A Drosihn wrote:
> At 2:33 AM +0100 1/9/04, Max Laier wrote:
> 
>> On Friday 09 January 2004 01:49, Garance A Drosihn wrote:
>>
>>>  Especially as disks get ever-larger, I think we're
>>>  better off with fewer-but-larger files, instead of a larger
>>>  number of tiny files.

As a port maintainer I'd like to say. It will harder to support. Much 
harder.

>> 2) Changes are much harder to track:
> 
> 
> On the contrary, changes should be *easier* to track.  All the
> information for any given port will be in two files.  This will
> not be true for all ports (particularly for ports which have a
> lot of patch files).

Let's image a situation: port has changed. What is chaneged? Let's see 
in WebCVS. Does distfile has changed? If yes, I know tarball has 
changed. pkg-plist has changed? I know a files structure has changed. I 
got this information even without opening this files. I'll open only 
Makefile to see a changes in it.
It may be much harder to look at a big diff instead.

> 
>> 3) It will get harder to create ports:
> 
> 
> I really do not expect this to happen -- particularly since
> the simple-program will know how to find the appropriate
> information for EITHER old-style or new-style ports.  Thus,
> it CANNOT be harder to do than it is now, because someone
> can just do exactly what they do now and the makefiles will
> handle it all.

How I create a port? I create a Makefile, pkg-descr, run make makesum, 
write pkg-plist with a files structure. It's logicaly separated: make 
logic, port description, distfiles info, files structure.

You gave an example for pkg-comment. But this one-line file IMHO really 
was useless. Collapsing distfile, pkg-desc and pkg-plist will mix 
comprehension.

Even separated pkg-install and pkg-deinstall has a logic: pkg-install 
will run only when you install a package not a port. pkg-deistall will 
run always you deinstall the port.

And I absolutely object against of collapsing patch files.
When patch files number grew more then five, I've renamed them from 
patch-0n in patch-WHERE_PLACED::FILE_NAME because I began to tangle 
them. But if it will one file I have no idea how can I change one of 
them easy.

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Sem.