BSD.local.dist - share/locale

[Andrew Pantyukhin]

I can't help thinking that the way we're trying to deal with
locale directories is far from optimal. IMHO, there are
several ways to improve the state of things:

1. Add more locales
We can add all those locales found in the same mtree
file under nls, and all less specific locales. I.e. if
aa_BB.CCC is found under nls, we can add aa_BB.CCC,
aa_BB and aa to share/locale.

2. Forget about left-overs
We can just ignore the directories left over in share/locale.
They are not harmful in any way, but it certainly contradicts
our long-standing effort to deinstall every thing we install.

3. Automate preening
We can add automatic preening to all ports that define
USE_GETTEXT. Something like
find share/locale/ -d -type d | xargs rmdir...
This way we can throw share/locale out of mtree. Ports
shouldn't (and don't) rely on these directories existence
anyway.

4. Define more specific rules as to what goes into mtree
and what doesn't. I know this one is very hard, each
change to mtree preceded by a violent bikeshed, but
someone has to lay down the rules and we have to follow
them.


Another question has arisen: should ports try to remove
directories belonging to their dependencies. On one hand
they certainly should, as "pkg_delete -f foo-dep && \
pkg_delete -f foo" should leave the system clean. OTOH
there are cases when ports need some empty dirs to exist
and become unhappy once they can't find them.

Anyway quite a few ports (e.g. almost all p5 ports) don't
remove one or more dirs of their dependencies and fixing
this is a matter of some research and careful sweeping
commits.

Your thoughts are welcome and thanks for reading this.