Re: pkgsrc organization

[Alistair Crooks <agc%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 04:32:50PM +0100, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 09:20:26AM -0600, Larson, Timothy E. wrote:
> > I was browsing through the packages in misc, and wondered if some of
> > them should be moved to other categories to improve organization.
> 
> Moving packages around provides a very small gain for a non-trivial
> price, so it is generally avoided.

at the risk of stirring up some bad blood, for a long time i've wanted
to be able to move some packages around, so that we don't have the big
hitters like net and devel holding quite so many.  the reasons behind
this are simply that i prefer to work with smaller directories, some
packages' category could be much more appropriate, etc.

jeremy mentioned the pkg_summary, and it would be good to have things
that aren't quite so set in stone.

now we come to the but...

...but if anyone is using pkgsrc to search for things, like keywords,
similar functionality, file names - there are much better ways of
doing this, like the marvellous pkgsrc.se site.

so from being in favor of having packages move around, i've done a
kind of 180 to the point where i believe that the categories we have
just now, some of which are just plain wrong when viewed in isolation,
merely serve as a kind of similar-area loose grouping, and there isn't
much to gain from setting up any new categories.

[which is all just to give some background to the current categories.
where one isn't exactly right, the virtual categories are fairly useful
levellers]

regards,
alistair