port install efficiency issue

[Tom Condon]

Darren Weber wrote:
> What is up with port?  It just ran for about 15 mins to build a package that
> is already installed.  If I were to work on the same damn thing, repeating
> it all day, day after day, I would get the sack pretty quickly.  Just think
> of the useless load on the network and the servers for all those futile
> downloads, etc.  So tell me, why shouldn't I switch to fink?  At least
> Debian has a decent package management system, geez!

Ah, how quickly we forget.

OK, kiddies, time for a history lesson.

When I first got a job out of college we had a computer.  Yes, *a* 
computer.  One.  We scheduled time on that computer based on our 
customer's needs, and when that time came we got to use the computer. 
The computer time was scheduled anytime from 5am-11:30pm, and you used 
the computer whenever you were scheduled.  If we wanted any compilations 
done off-line (when our customers were not there waiting to use the 
computer) we did them in "batch".  They ran batch from 12:00-12:30 pm 
and from 11:30pm-12:00am.  If there were too many jobs to run all of 
them (virtually always), some didn't get run until the next batch 
session.  My particular project had four different compilations that 
took 30+ minutes, so I frequently had long turnaround times.

So I have little sympathy for those who complain that something five 
magnitudes of complexity greater than what we were working on takes 15 
whole minutes.  I agree with the other respondent.  Add something 
positive with your comments, don't complain about how it isn't faster 
than a speeding bullet.

Oh, and lest you think what we were doing in those dark ages of 
computing wasn't critically important, my project was the 747/Space 
Shuttle mated flight and separation simulation.  You know, when they 
land the Shuttle in the desert at Edwards AFB they put it on the back of 
a 747 to ferry it back to Cape Canaveral (now called Cape Kennedy).  We 
made that ferry system work.  We also trained the astronauts to launch 
the Shuttle from the back of the 747 in flight so they could practice 
landing it before they ever shot it up into space.


In A Chord,

Tom Condon
Fossilized Software Engineer

It's so hard when I have to, And so easy when I want to.
	- Sondra Anice Barnes


PS  I did fudge a bit there.  We had a second computer.  You programmed 
it with patch-cords.  You may need to see the wikipedia for an 
explanation of those.