Packaging system suggestion (pkgsrc.org propaganda)

[Joerg Sonnenberger]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2004 at 04:28:55PM +0100, Michal Pasternak wrote:
> Joerg Sonnenberger [Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 12:39:45PM +0100]:
> > The question is not wether it is bad, but wether it is good enough.
> > IMO there are three features from the OpenBSD ports which are highly
> > useful:
> > - the fake installation I mentioned already
> 
> If you redefine PREFIX, 99% of apps will install in the place you want.
> I don't know how does FAKE OpenBSD Ports installation work.

This one of the options. The canonical is DESTDIR which is supported by
most current apps. The problem is some apps out there expects that they
run at the very some location compiled for. That's what makes to temporary
view idea difficult. Basically how difficult would it be to add a
USE_FAKE option or similiar to specify that this package can be fake
installed?

> 
> > - the subpackages and pseudo-packages which are esp. useful to handle
> >   large software packages like XFree86 and dynamically loadable plug-ins.
> 
> You already have "meta" category, for packages, which don't provide
> anything. This functionality is already implemented, unless you meant
> something else. I don't understand also the "dynamically loadable plugins"
> part -- how do such packages would differ from ordinary ones?

Consider some big project like XFree86 or perhaps OpenOffice. Ideally
it should be possible to just install the fonts or the X-Server or
StarCalc. ATM FreeBSD ports handles that by duplicating ports requiring
multiple builds which is bad. "meta" packages have there very own uses,
but are something different (canonical examples are KDE and GNOME).
The loadable plug-ins as pseudo-flavors (my fault) allows us to split
off a part of the package e.g. the MP3 plugin for XMMS to installed
separatly. Another very good example is transcode. This is useful to
since many such plug-ins need additional software e.g. mpg123 installed
or have different licenses or patent issues. The situation becomes
interesting if some platforms don't support shared libs. In that case
the pseudo-flavor becomes a real one and therefore a built-in option of
the package.

Hope that clarifices my issues.

Joerg