Re: A new metric for source package importance in ports

["Johannes Schauer" <j.schauer@email.de>]

Hi,

Quoting peter green (2013-11-28 01:12:57)
> One problem with these metrics is that you get source packages whose
> importance is artifically inflated because of the way our source packages
> work. If anything in a source package needs x then the whole source package
> has to build-depend on x.  Even if x is only needed for some perhipheral
> functionlity that could easilly be removed in the event that x was
> unavailable (either on a particular port or in general). In the case of
> libraries there may be a binary dependency too for rarely used fuctionality.
> 
> For example some of the mesa libraries drag in libwayland0 which means
> wayland ends up with a very high importance even though afaict hardly
> anyone uses it right now.
> 
> Another big example is languages. Lots of packages build language
> bindings for lots of languages dragging those languages into the
> "important set".
> 
> So these metrics are a good guide to what packages are unimportant
> but to determine whether a package is really important or just
> psuedo-important still requires human judgement.

Correct.

The situation can be greatly improved once build profiles allow to mark build
dependencies as "less important" or "non essential".

cheers, josch