From owner-freebsd-ports Mon Dec 18 16:37:23 1995 Return-Path: owner-ports Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id QAA01576 for ports-outgoing; Mon, 18 Dec 1995 16:37:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from chemserv.umd.edu (chemserv.umd.edu [129.2.64.40]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id QAA01571 for ; Mon, 18 Dec 1995 16:37:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from mocha.eng.umd.edu (mocha.eng.umd.edu [129.2.98.16]) by chemserv.umd.edu (8.7.3/8.7) with ESMTP id TAA24757 for ; Mon, 18 Dec 1995 19:37:17 -0500 (EST) Received: (chuckr@localhost) by mocha.eng.umd.edu (8.7.3/8.6.4) id TAA15510; Mon, 18 Dec 1995 19:37:16 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 1995 19:37:16 -0500 (EST) From: Chuck Robey X-Sender: chuckr@mocha.eng.umd.edu To: FreeBSD-ports@FreeBSD.org Subject: a kvetch and a proposal Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-ports@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk First, the kvetch. I tried to make color_xterm, after I made sure my ports sources were absolutely up-to-date, and it fails during patching, like this: ===> Applying distributed patches for color_xterm-pl5 patch: **** can't cd to /usr/ports/x11/color_xterm/work/pub/R6untarred/xc/programs/xterm/: No such file or directory *** Error code 1 Now, on to the proposal. I often find myself remaking a particular port, one that I already have correctly installed, just to get at docs that are hidden in the dist files. What I'd like is the ability to have the docs automatically installed somewhere for me, permanently. It'd have to be an optional thing, because I suspect there's a lot of people who are either walking encyclopedias, or just don't care to clutter their disks. Notice I'm NOT talking about the man files, I'm talking about READMEs and other things that are around in lots of our ports. How about setting up something, so I can set an environmental variable in my shell, to cause docs to be copied to somewhere for me? I could have a var named LOCAL_PORTS_DOC_LOCATION, which I'd set to something likely, like /usr/local/doc. In any port that was correctly set up for it, a subdirectory of /usr/local/doc/ could be made, and all files that the port author designated as doc-file would be copied for me to this directory. It could even have them all automatically gzipped (not sure about that, tho). If I thought all the above was needless cluuter, I just wouldn't define the variable, and it wouldn't do any doc copying for me. So this would probably have _no effect whatsoever_ if you didn't go out of your way to make it so. In fact, until some of the ports were modified to support this, it'd not have any effect anyways. Is this needless complication, or a useful feature? ============================================================================ Chuck Robey chuckr@eng.umd.edu -- I run FreeBSD on n3lxx and Journey2 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Dilbert Zone is Dilbert's new WWW home! The area features never-before-seen original sketches of Dilbert, a photo tour of Scott Adams' studio, Dilbert Trivia and memorabilia, high school photos and much more!: