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

[Steven Kreuzer]

On Jan 27, 2009, at 3:29 PM, Jo Rhett wrote:

> (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.

graphics/graphviz requires X11 to build so WITHOUT_X11 is ignored for  
that port.

>
> 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.

I assume you haven't been testing the "Reports" function.

> 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?

Because RT requires them.

> Are these extra ports added to satisfy requirements in extensions  
> that you have added to RT?

Nope.

> 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?

You would have to figure out a way to make graphviz compile without  
x11. I'm not sure that is possible.

>
> 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.

http://portsmon.freebsd.org/portdependencytree.py?category=www&portname=rt38


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