mtools vs X11 (Re: FreeBSD Port: syslinux-3.72)

[Steven Kreuzer]

On Mar 19, 2009, at 4:06 AM, perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:

> Gary Jennejohn <gary.jennejohn at freenet.de> wrote:
>> Luigi Rizzo <rizzo at iet.unipi.it> wrote:
>>> ... Cynthia Flynn wrote:
>> [snip - syslinux pulls in too much X11 stuff]
>>> I think the extra dependencies that you find listed for syslinux:
>>> [snip]
>>> come directly from mtools ...
>>
>> Yeah.  It looks like mtools uses X11 by default, which IMHO is
>> incorrect.  Instead it should have an option to turn X11 _on_,
>> rather than one for turning it _off_, as it currently does.
>
> IMO it is a POLA violation for mtools to depend on X11 *at all*.
>
> Instead of having an option, maybe the port should be split so that
> mtools itself just provides the code to access FAT filesystems, and
> (say) mtools-gui does the fancy display stuff.

mtools already supports WITHOUT_X11 so if you don't want the GUI  
stuff, you can build the port
without it. Personally, I think it makes more sense for mtools to be  
the full and complete representation
of the actual program.

If you would like to create a new port and call it mtools-without-gui  
and strip out all the X11 stuff, similar to
cvsup and cvsup-without-gui, I say go for it.

--
Steven Kreuzer
http://www.exit2shell.com/~skreuzer