On Sat, Nov 4, 2017 at 12:13 PM, Marc Espie <es...@nerim.net> wrote: > Welcome to the world of actual distributions. We are supposed to > be the expert and to know better than the end user. > > There's nothing that prevents you from adding this kind of rationale > to the actual package DESCR. > > One strong point of OpenBSD is that we actuall make this kind of > decision. Choosing best paths for software components, so that the > end-user doesn't have to worry too much. > > I've never been a fan of debian where they split stuff into so > many very small packages that you never know what to install. >
If you are a user, things like Drupal, Symfony, WordPress, Magento, ... have a requirements page that tells you what extensions you have to enable. It's up to the developers of those systems to tell you what the requirements are. If you are a PHP developer writing actual software, in my opinion, you should learn what the extensions are for. There is good documentation available on php.net for developers. Now, think like an end-user. Assume they want to use php. What do > they do ? They add the main package. They try to run something. > They discover one dependency is missing. They add that dependency. > They do it another time... > > How many times are they going to do it ? > > The safe bet is that they usually give up after the 4th dependency, > and just add *everything* that has php in it. > > Congrats, you just gave them enough rope so that they add fileinfo > by default. > Let's make a comparison with let's say PF. Users try to run something, they open a port, open another port, ... so how many ports do they open until they just allow any to any? If users are lazy there is not much you can do about it. What solution should OpenBSD provide for that? A default ruleset that assumes they run smtp, serve http, use skype, etc? No offense, I'm tying to understand your point of view.
