[rt-users] why does the freebsd port have 200+ dependancies?

[Jo Rhett]

(FreeBSD specific post, if you're not using you can simply ignore this  
message)

After seeing the ten bazillion things that www/rt38 wanted to install  
I ended up building a new machine separate from our build server just  
to build all of these ports.  I installed every one of them by hand  
(non-root user, typing the root password each time, manually checking  
the config option for each port).  I disabled every option in GD and  
GraphWiz that I could, and it still installed 272 ports.

In particular, it installed 120-something X11 apps and libraries on a  
machine which doesn't have X11, will never have X11, and explicitly  
has WITHOUT_X11=yes in /etc/make.conf.   So it's being overridden  
somewhere.

I have now removed 100-something of these ports and RT continues to  
operate and function in every way, without any difficulty.  After  
every 10 or so ports I remove (usually in the same dependancy branch)  
I stop and retest every function RT provides.

Before I continue to waste my time trying to figure out why so many  
things are enabled, could you as a maintainer perhaps address the  
question of why so many extra ports are added?  Are these extra ports  
added to satisfy requirements in extensions that you have added to  
RT?   Can I convince you to put those dependancies in a separate port  
with that extension so that we aren't required to have massive port  
bloat with the base package?

Note to RT Maintainers: it would be nice if you documented the  
explicit list of dependancies rather than forcing us to read the code  
to figure it out.

-- 
Jo Rhett
Net Consonance : consonant endings by net philanthropy, open source  
and other randomness