Re: Pkg-based base system.

At 1:47 PM +0100 3/15/04, Johan Pettersson wrote:
>Wouldn't it be nice to have a pkg-based base system? So you
>easily can remove parts from the base system, like openssh,
>ipfw, ipf, bind, sendmail and so on. This couldn't be too hard
>to implement. :)

This is a topic near-and-dear to many developers.  If you can
implement it, then many people will be eager to see it.  If you
can not implement it, then you are just irritating all the
people who would like to *see* it, but who do not have the
time to implement it.  And no, you do not "encourage" them by
claiming that it "couldn't be too hard" to implement.

Yes, it sounds like it would be easy to do.  It sounds especially
easy to do for anyone who has not tried to do it, and really do
it right.  Perhaps we can make a rather abysmal system with only
a few months of hard work, but no one wants to volunteer that
much of their time (ie "give their time for free") just to produce
something that no one will be happy with.  It would take even more
months of hard work from many developers to implement a really good
version.

One major problem is that you have three or four hundred developers
who are trying to get *other* work done, because they need *that*
(other) work done.  So, you either get everyone to stop what they
are doing for a few months (HA!), or you have to come up with a
way to phase in the change so you aren't disrupting everyone else.

I suspect you are trying to be friendly and encouraging, but I
am afraid you are grossly underestimating the size of the task.
As such, don't be too surprised if people are generally hostile
to your comments, even though many of us really do like the idea,
*IF* we only had the time to implement it right...

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad_at_gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad_at_freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih_at_rpi.edu