On 27-Jul-98 Hubert Feyrer spoke unto us all:
#  I don't say that adding some modules to a pkg should restart any
#  accompanying daemons etc., but _if_ you install a module, really make sure
#  that it is installed all the way and not do a half-assed job which the
#  user has to clean up after. 

I agree with this..  What I don't want to see is all my hard work in setting up
some wierd single-cased mime type for my special web server get blown away by a
pkg install.. Thats my only fear..  If we can be *sure* we aren't breaking
something.. then fine.. go with it...

But a big problem is going to be people with NFS servers and people who want to
compile thier own pkgs.  Say I have a cluster of 90 486-66's.. I certainly am
not going to build a pkg on every one of those.. I probably have one decent
pentium that I build on, and then nfs the stuff to the cluster..

Maybe we need a variable (duck) that says "don't mess with my config files, I
know what I'm doing."  If you don't set that, you get the usual drool behavior.

# > *really* like to stop the "surprise! your running mysqld as root on port
# > 61!"
#  
#  Well, and who said it to actually *install* mysqld in that case?
#  Sure if we only have 1 mysql package, it's difficult at install time to
#  tell it under which UID to run, but that's a different problem.

Perhaps you are missing what I'm saying on this one.  The problem is.. When you
type make install.. It does some "sanity checks" of the binaries.  It launches
mysqld, runs a few queries against it to make sure everything is kosher, then
says "ok, all done"  And leaves mysqld running..  This is why linux is
insecure.. this is hideous.. People like netbsd because it comes shipped
secure..  No wild services running on all the ports you don't know about.. 
Installing a daemon doesn't just up and launch it for you.  This is a *good
thing*

#  The deal is quite simple: install a new machine, pkg_add fvwm2, and see
#  what comes up. Add something _a bit_ better. I don't say add bells and
#  whistles, but again, any clueless user will see this at first after
#  setting up his machine, and it's the first impression that counts, no? 
#  If you add some pager that's not even well-aligned and that's too small to
#  have space for the bitmap in it, that looks highly suckt. That's what I
#  mean.

Thats not so terrible.. Maybe we can do that..

#  
#  But maybe we want to have all this pkg-config-stuff in an extra pkg
#  (dotfiles? :)

I think this will become a bigger issue than we currenly imagine.. and may
become a nightmare if we don't figure out the correct approach before it's too
late..  (I certainly don't have that, I just want to get my views pointed out
here to stimulate some thought on it)

The problem as I see it is..  You have two sets of users to satisfy.. You have
the drools, and the people who know what they are doing..  If we go full
throttle either direction, we risk a disaster.  Not alot of clued people are
going to be submitting packages that they themselves won't even use because
it's too drooly for them.  And if all the pkgs drop you at a shell prompt with
the words "Good Luck!" we won't have many users..  Satisfying both might not
even be possible.. but its what we want to shoot for.

---
Tim Rightnour    -  root@garbled.net
http://www.zynetwc.com/~garbled/garbled.html