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Date:      Sat, 12 May 2001 17:00:29 -0500
From:      Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>
To:        "Richard E. Hawkins" <dochawk@psu.edu>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ports of development trees of applications?
Message-ID:  <15101.45693.679078.253619@guru.mired.org>
In-Reply-To: <89227837@toto.iv>

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Richard E. Hawkins <dochawk@psu.edu> types:
> As I keep toying with doing it for lyx, I wonder:  are there any ports 
> that, rather than porting a specific (and checksummed for safety) 
> version, track the development trees for the applications?

There are ports of "development versions" of applications and
tools. It's possible to disable the checksum, but part of the point of
that is to make sure that you don't wind up backing out a patch
because it's been adopted by the development group.

> My thinking with lyx would be to have a port which does an original 
> fetch, sets up the directory for configuration, has appropriate 
> dependencies for lyx, and then leaves it to the user to install and 
> compile.  This would give an installed binary that behaves the 
> "Expected" way, with appropriate entries in /var/db . . .

Well, since development branches tend to grow - and lose - installed
files at odd intervals, you wouldn't really get that. The port's
packing list has to be updated any time such a change happens,
otherwise the plist is wrong, and you may wind up with a partial
install, or files that aren't in place any more.

> Are there any ports like this?
> 
> THey would also seem to be useful for mozilla, openoffice, and wine . . 

I don't think any track the developement tree; they tend to track the
"development tarballs" instead, and need to be updated at the same
frequence that the project generates tarballs.

Another approach would be to create a "metaport" approach. Instead of
installing and building the package, you provide a dependency list so
that everything the package needs is installed, and possibly a
configuration file for FreeBSD or a fetch script or some such. That
wouldn't provide correctly updated information in /var/db/pkgs, but
that requires actually updating the port whenever the package changes
in any case.

	<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

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