Date: Sun, 4 Apr 1999 23:40:05 -0700 From: Michael Haro <mharo@area51.fremont.ca.us> To: "Bruce A. Mah" <bmah@CA.Sandia.GOV>, ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: What do you think? Message-ID: <19990404234005.A36868@patrol.area51.fremont.ca.us> In-Reply-To: <199904050543.WAA19279@stennis.ca.sandia.gov>; from Bruce A. Mah on Sun, Apr 04, 1999 at 10:43:35PM -0700 References: <19990403181558.A91593@patrol.area51.fremont.ca.us> <199904050543.WAA19279@stennis.ca.sandia.gov>
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On Sun, Apr 04, 1999 at 10:43:35PM -0700, Bruce A. Mah wrote: > If memory serves me right, Michael Haro wrote: > > What do you think about creating some sort of variable in the > > Makefile like NEXT_VERSION or something which contains either a > > regular expression or printf like format string so that a script > > can go through the ports and check for new versions. > > > My idea was actually to help the ports maintainers know when a new version > > of the source for a program they are responsible for is out. > > A *newer* version isn't necessarily a *better* one, > and there's going to be some human judgement involved to decide what > the right thing to do is. Look at ports such as tcl or gtk, which > have (or had) multiple versions lying around the ports tree, or the > localized versions of various ports. Exactly, but if you don't notice that a newer version exists, you can't tell if it is a better one. I don't mean to say that by creating a script you no longer need to watch over your ports though. Human interaction is always better than scripts alone. Scripts just assist the human, they don't replace them. > What if the distfiles move? If the distfiles move then Bill Fenner's ports distfile survey (http://www.freebsd.org/~fenner/portsurvey/) will notice and mark the port as unfetchable on the webpage. > What if they change without changing version numbers (vnc did this > several times)? Are you sure you can even determine what's "newer" If they change w/o version numbers changing then a script won't be able to tell unless it were to compare last modified dates with the last time it checked on the server. But even if it didn't check, that is why we have maintainers of ports. > with a regexp match against the version number (as a hint, pkg_version > tries, but it doesn't always succeed)? The reason I suggested creating a new variable in the Makefiles is to help out with the matches. Again, it wouldn't be full proof, but it would possibly be closer since it would be hinting at what to match. > (I don't meant to mock your idea...I'm just pointing out some of the > subtle difficulties involved, many of which I ran into while writing > pkg_version.) I was thinking that this could complement Bill Fenner's ports distfile survey. If nothing else, an automated scan would help with the 173 ports which don't currently have a maintainer. Michael To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message
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