Alistair Crooks wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 24, 2006 at 11:26:35AM -0500, Johnny C. Lam wrote:
>> I hope this is not *too* controversial, but I am thinking of removing 
>> the existing pkgviews implementation in pkgsrc after the 2006Q1 branch. 
>>  The existing code is complicating development of some new 
>> infrastructure components that I'm pursuing.  I'd like to get a sense of 
>> the number of users that this might impact.
> 
> I'm interested in your new infrastructure, but would like to know a
> bit more about why it's so invasive that pkgviews needs to go. I'd
> also like to know what needs to be done to complete pkgviews.

The new infrastructure is something to replace mk/compiler, mk/wrapper, 
and mk/buildlink3.  This new build system will get rid of most of the 
buildlink3.mk files in pkgsrc, and do more inspection of installed 
packages to determine what headers and libraries are available and what 
indirect dependencies should be pulled in.  I'm hoping that this will 
considerably simplify pkgsrc infrastructure, and will be easier for 
developers to understand, maintain, and improve.

pkgviews is implemented almost entirely within the three modules I 
mentioned above, and I don't want to put pkgviews into the new bit yet, 
since it would complicate the code with something which I'm not entirely 
sure how many people are actually using.  This is part of the reason why 
I just wanted to get a "show of hands" for who would be impacted if 
pkgsrc lost the ability to do pkgviews.

> My understanding is that you still need to "reference count"
> directories (which can be manoeuvered around by adding a switch to
> pkg_delete to ignore the return results from an rmdir(2), and which I
> think would be a good addition anyway), and also the problems arising
> from the mini-packages debate, which I think are greatly reduced by the
> former change. Are there any more showstopeers?

I'll respond to this portion on tech-pkg.

In any case, my intention when I started this thread was solely to 
determine how many users would be affected if pkgviews was removed from 
the system, and I'm still like to get a sense of those numbers.

	Cheers,

	-- Johnny Lam <jlam@pkgsrc.org>