[HEADS UP] Ports Infrastructure Changes

[J. Hellenthal]

On Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:38, lists@ wrote:
>> you can then build category based directories with symlinks to the main
>> location based on what categories
>
> My ports-mgmt/symports does something like this. It builds a full
> directory tree of symlinks for the "secondary" categories.
>
>> I'm sure that something like this has been mentioned before. But I don't see
>> what else is going to stop
>> the categorization issue popping up all of the time.
>
> If we alphabetized the ports then there would be constant conversation
> about how whether or not we should categorize them.
>

I agree with that but wouldn't it be great if there was something in place 
that would be extensible beyond a few thousand ports without having to 
think about what the contents of that directory would be ?

If we stopped imposing upon the names of projects like Perl with p5- or 
python with py- and put them in their respective alphabetic category ?

If you already knew what you were looking for and you knew the structure 
then their is no need to search ( cd /usr/ports/<pool>/<A-Z>/<portname> ).

A few thoughts I had to go along with this the other day when I mentioned 
it in ##freebsd before it was brought up here, but laced out in a tree 
format where I can better visually explain it than put it in words as a 
rough draft.

I envision the tag-files directory below as a community effort of the 
Wikipedia kind that would lift the effort off of the committer's backs and 
promote more of an open involvement as a whole to edit them. This is where 
I seen the use of a DVCS like Mercurial come into play because if you 
divide it up the tree properly into separate repo's then cloning and 
distribution and community involvement of those repo's becomes a benefit. A 
referral access system along with key access, (*****).

./ports
|-- COPYRIGHT
|-- Changelog/
|   |-- ABI
|   |-- DELETED
|   |-- DEPRECATED
|   |-- OBSOLETED
|   |-- OPTIONS
|   `-- UPDATING
|-- Distfiles/
|-- GIDs
|-- INDEX-8
|-- KNOBS
|-- Mgmt/
|   |-- pkg_cutleaves/
|   |-- portmaster/
|   |-- portupgrade/
|   `-- tinderbox/
|-- Mk/
|-- Packages/
|-- Tagfiles/
|   |-- categories/
|   |   |-- devel-all
|   |   |-- ftp-all
|   |   |-- www-client-all
|   |   |-- www-server-all
|   |   `-- www-webapp-all
|   |-- community/
|   |   `-- custom-server-tag1
|   `-- installs/
|       |-- desktop-install-kde4.2
|       `-- lamp-install
|-- Templates/
|-- Tools/
|-- UIDs
`-- pool/
     |-- a/
     |-- b/
     |-- c/
     |   `-- clang/
     |-- d/
     |-- e/
     |-- f/
     |   `-- firefox/
     |-- g/
     |-- h/
     |-- l/
     |   `-- llvm-devel/
     |-- libc/
     |-- libh/
     |-- p/
     |   `-- perl5.10/
     |-- t/
     `-- z/


Just some cents for the mail-bank. It works as it is now, if you are happy 
running through every once in a while and re-categorizing things and 
re-judging whether something is supposed to or should be in a category 
then sobeit, ultimately it doesn't stop the software from working on the 
other end and the work is still very much appreciated either way.

-- 

  Regards,

  J. Hellenthal
  (0x89D8547E)
  JJH48-ARIN