>> In my opinion, the option to build packages is only useful to people who >> want extreme modifications to their applications. I am sure most >> people, including me would not really care about source packages; I for >> one would not bother building OpenOffice or KDE locally, total waste of
> There are at least a _few_ exceptions to this. One being mplayer where > you can get a few percent improvement allowing it to taylor itself to your > CPU at compile time. Don't scoff though, this can make the difference I must admit I'm a bit shocked at the "binary packages only" talk. One of the whole points, for me, of using the BSD's is that I have the option of looking at the source and build structure, not just for the system stuff, but for outside applications as well (ports for me, as I use FreeBSD these days). I've managed to help fix a few build bugs as a result. The tailoring to individual use is also important: I set MINIMAL_KDE and WITHOUT_GNOME in /etc/make.conf because the chance of bringing in broken cruft from KDE and/or Gnome is minimized. As a result, I can't remember the last time I had problems with portupgrade. I upgrade system and ports every 1-3 weeks or so, on three different boxes, with 200-300 ports on each. -- Charles Allen
