From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 25 05:27:51 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 82B2516A41F for ; Tue, 25 Oct 2005 05:27:51 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from silby@silby.com) Received: from relay03.pair.com (relay03.pair.com [209.68.5.17]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 08E9543D46 for ; Tue, 25 Oct 2005 05:27:50 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from silby@silby.com) Received: (qmail 37644 invoked from network); 25 Oct 2005 05:27:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO localhost) (unknown) by unknown with SMTP; 25 Oct 2005 05:27:49 -0000 X-pair-Authenticated: 209.68.2.70 Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 00:27:47 -0500 (CDT) From: Mike Silbersack To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20051025002406.M911@odysseus.silby.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Subject: An idea about forbidden ports X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 05:27:51 -0000 I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not, but I'm going to throw this idea out there in hopes that it might be of some use. I was thinking how this error message occurs: podysseus# pkg_add -r vmware3 Error: FTP Unable to get ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6-current/Latest/vmware3.tbz: File unavailable (e.g., file not found, no access) But really, we do have vmware3, it's just not packaged due to it being marked FORBIDDEN. So, would it be a useful idea to include dummy packages for FORBIDDEN programs so that people know that they exist? When you did pkg_add -r vmware3 have it grab a dummy package that just has a shell script that tells the person why the package doesn't exist, suggest how to go about installing that port, and return an error value so that the package isn't successfully installed. This would be of immense help once we grow some sort of package manager system, as it would allow everything to be listed. It might be a problem with portupgrade -P, though. Just a thought, Mike "Silby" Silbersack