Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 20:55:33 +0200 From: Andreas Klemm <andreas@klemm.gtn.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: ports@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: want to discuss three new variables in the ports collection Message-ID: <19970529205533.51147@klemm.gtn.com> In-Reply-To: <27430.864920230@time.cdrom.com>; from Jordan K. Hubbard on Thu, May 29, 1997 at 08:37:10AM -0700 References: <19970529120325.08347@klemm.gtn.com> <27430.864920230@time.cdrom.com>
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On Thu, May 29, 1997 at 08:37:10AM -0700, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> > What would you think about introducing three new variables
> > into the ports mechanism ?! HOMEPAGE, AUTHOR and
> > MAILINGLIST ?!
>
> I think that's getting out of control.
Maybe, but I still think they are usefull.
> The ports collection wasn't ever meant to provide a complete
> bibligraphic reference for every bit of software, telling
> you everything from the author's birthday to his blood type,
Hmm, I understand, that the ports collection already is a ,huge'
collection of software and really is an amount of work for the
maintainers.
> and adding extraneous details like this can only clutter the
> makefiles and make them harder to read.
Well, I didn't make this proposal only just for going into details.
> Two thumbs down on this proposal. If you want to find out more about
> a port, type "make extract" and read the ports own docs.
Some disadvantages here:
- The user must have the sources or he'd have to fetch
K- or MBytes from internet only to get some little
information
- The user must have the space to unpack the sources. Some
packages are really large. So you need space and waste
some machine cycles ...
> If the author doesn't give contact info there, he probably
> doesn't want to hear from anyone. :)
Well that is true, but doesn't matter here I think. Don't raise
the exception to normal case ;-)
Ahem, don't you (or someone else) see advantages by adding these
informations ?! ;-)
port maintainers and user of ports get more easily further
information on the software.
More credit to the authors of the package. We don't have any
real standardized mechanism to honor the people who have
written the software. Ok, you could put that into the DESCR
file, but there is no standard.
Unexperianced users might get faster access to real help
channels if there are special mailinglists ...
Only my $0.02
Andreas ///
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