Batteries Included Policy

[Randall Wood]

On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 11:32 PM, Rainer Müller <raimue at macports.org> wrote:
> Landon Fuller wrote:
>> I would like to propose a policy for general consideration. I believe
>> it could save everyone energy and brain-cycles; let's call it
>> "batteries included":
>>       As a general rule, ports should enable all standard features/
>> functionality that may be useful to an end-user.
>
> Sounds like a good idea, but I am not sure if it is so easy to reduce
> the wide spreaded user base to one single typical end-user.
>
> We already get the usual complaints from users about "Why do I need to
> build $portname, Leopard already has that!!1eleven", so we should watch
> not to include big dependencies by default. If the list of dependencies
> for a feature is short (and without build time consuming ports), it can
> be included by default.
>
>  > [...]
>> Features that probably should be enabled by default, but often aren't:
>>       - SSL support.
>
> What if a software provides alternatives in using OpenSSL or GnuTLS
> (e.g. curl and wireshark)? I would say we need variants here, but one of
> them should be enabled by default.
>
>>       - LDAP support.
>
> I doubt the majority of the user base needs this. Personally, I don't
> have OpenLDAP installed and I don't miss anything.
>
>>       - Database support (pgsql, mysql, sqlite). The client libraries are
>> cheap to install.
>
> Not that easy, as most ports let you choose the version of the library.
> For example there are some ports with +postgresql83/+postgresql82 and
> +mysql4/+mysql5.
>
> Would maybe work fine with postgresql and sqlite, but mysql always
> builds the whole server (see <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/14146>).
>
> I don't think desktop end users deal with databases, but server admins
> do. So I am a bit undecided if this is a good default (see also below).
>
>>       - SASL/GSSAPI support. Mac OS X is very kerberos-enabled, MacPorts
>> can and should be too.
>
> Kerberos and Cyrus-SASL2 would be installed anyway if we choose to make
> LDAP a default. So this is kind of bundled.
>
>
> I may want to add IPv6 to this list. We have some ports using
> --disable-ipv6 by default and adding a +ipv6 variant. I think it is
> reasonable to build everything with IPv6 support these days. An +ipv6
> variant would only be justified if the port provides IPv6 as an
> replacement for IPv4 (yes, I have seen software doing this).

I should note also that the US DoD (and maybe other agencies) are
mandating that all IP traffic be IPV6 within their networks starting
this year.

-- 
Randall Wood
randall.h.wood at alexandriasoftware.com

"The rules are simple: The ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes.
All the rest is just philosophy."