Re: [Gnu-arch-users] On configs and huge source trees

[Alfred M\. Szmidt]

   I have in mind a specific example: /usr/ports in FreeBSD.  It is a
   CVS repository with more than 124000 files in it in more than 32000
   directories.  We could split it several different ways: at the port
   level, at the category level and so on but we'd lose the atomic
   commit feature and changeset generation, that is unacceptable IMHO.

For the ports system it doesn't make much sense, indeed.  But if you
maintained the actual source code for each port in the ports tree,
then splitting it up would be the right thing to do and you wouldn't
lose anything, only gain lots of sanity.

The ports tree is one huge monolith, compared to gcc where you
actually have several real modules (zlib, libmudflap, ...). Just
splitting things up cause you can is silly... :-)