A Plea to Reduce Dependences (e.g., for swig)

[Jordan K. Hubbard]

On Aug 16, 2011, at 12:23 PM, M.E. O'Neill wrote:

> Many MacPorts packages depend on other MacPorts packages of software that already exists on a Mac OS X system, such as

Thanks for bringing this up!   I think it's a very valid point.

Another related and equally valid point is that a lot of the "churn" in some of the base technologies required by MacPorts in OS X (it's just "OS X" now) throughout the years has essentially slowed down dramatically or stopped altogether.  I'm not saying that OS X has stopped evolving - far from it - but most of that evolution is now happening in other areas of the system entirely and OSS components like Tcl, Perl, Python, ncurses, ICU and so on are evolving far less rapidly.  Security updates are applied and critical bug fixes taken, but we're not updating things "just because we can" or because a couple of people asked us to anymore.  The risk/reward ratio has changed more in the direction of minimizing risk!

So, what that means in a nutshell is that my previous advice, probably given somewhere around the Tiger timeframe, that MacPorts install all its own versions of stuff in order to be fully isolated from the base system is probably not as relevant as it once was, and the assumption that you need to control every aspect of your own destiny in order to avoid constant breakage might be worth re-examining at this point in history!

- Jordan


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