What are the benefits of NO_ARCH?

[Mateusz Piotrowski]

On 11/3/20 11:24 AM, Mateusz Piotrowski wrote:
> On 11/2/20 3:50 PM, Baptiste Daroussin wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 02, 2020 at 03:48:34PM +0100, Stefan Esser wrote:
>>> Am 02.11.20 um 15:33 schrieb Mateusz Piotrowski:
>>>> I wonder if setting NO_ARCH=yes brings any significant benefits to how
>>>> our ports collection works. I'd be grateful if you could shed some light
>>>> on the importance of setting NO_ARCH whenever possible.
>>> NO_ARCH means that there is no need to build packages for each of the
>>> supported architectures, e.g. for pure interpreted scripts or data files
>>> that do not depend on byte-order and word-size (e.g. many font file
>>> formats).
>>>
>>> The result is reduced resources spent on building the packages, network
>>> traffic, disk space on mirrors and on distribution media.
>> Yes that is the goal, in practice it is not yet the case, so it is purely
>> informational, but that what we are aiming at yes.
>
> Thanks!
>
I've added a note to the porter's handbook based on the information you provided:

https://svnweb.freebsd.org/doc?view=revision&revision=54671