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Re: Package options dialog



On 05/06/18 11:17, John Nemeth wrote:
On May 6,  8:06am, Jason Bacon wrote:
} On 05/06/18 05:22, Mayuresh wrote:
} > On Sat, May 05, 2018 at 02:31:03PM -0500, Jason Bacon wrote:
} >> Has anyone looked into providing something like FreeBSD's dailog4ports for
} >> selecting package options?
} > Not too many would disagree in *nix world that interactivity for long
} > batch oriented jobs is not such a great idea.
}
} Which is why FreeBSD ports has "make -DBATCH".
}
} I would agree that the dialogs can get annoying and should not be
} enabled by default, as they are in FreeBSD ports.
}
} People seem to be making assumptions about my intent instead of
} clarifying, though.
}
} I'm not suggesting that we insert a mandatory dialog into every package
} build, just offer an optional, user-friendly interface for controlling
} options.
}
} I doesn't even have to be integrated into pkgsrc, but if it were, I
} would only invoke it under a deliberate command like "make config".
}
} I'm trying to make the system more attractive to Joe Scientist. Many
} researchers have very few or no IT staff and limited Unix skills. They
} need the ability to install software by themselves and pkgsrc can be
} enormously helpful, especially if we provide more user-friendly tools.

        I would suspect in this case, that user-friendly would mean
using pkgin or some other binary package manager and not building
packages at all.

}-- End of excerpt from Jason Bacon

As I just stated in another reply, binary packages have to be portable and are often much slower than something built for the native CPU.  Scientists may also need uncommon build options that pull in dependencies that we would not want to make part of the default build.

This is one of the reasons that systems like pkgsrc that are designed to build from source are so valuable to science.



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