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To: Chuck Robey <chuckr@glue.umd.edu>
cc: "David E. O'Brien" <obrien@Nuxi.cs.ucdavis.edu>,
        FreeBSD Ports <FreeBSD-Ports@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: Sample Makefile 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 01 Aug 1996 18:48:49 EDT."
             <Pine.OSF.3.95.960801184620.22202G-100000@fiber.eng.umd.edu> 
Date: Thu, 01 Aug 1996 18:12:16 -0700
Message-ID: <10174.838948336@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
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> I didn't want to at first, it's 13K in size, but I guess I will.  I've
> pasted it to the end of this file.  If you comment on it, please don't
> repost the whole thing to the list, but I'd like any comments anyone might
> have.

Hmmm.  That's pretty huge.  Erm..  As that most worthy tome, "Science
Made Stupid", states: "Warty things too big, start over."

 [Those unfamilar with SMS will simply have to run right out and buy
  a copy, now won't you?]

I think this Makefile is a convincing argument that the human-readable
template file approach is a bad idea.  What you want instead is a
template file that's *program* readable, and a program which uses
libdialog or X or whatever your choice of GUI technology is to prompt
the user for various things based on which fields it sees as
"optional", "non-optional" and so on.  There would have to be some
very port-specific assumptions for certain fields, such as the
*_DEPENDS values which would require that you turn lists like "libz xpm"
into "Xpm\\.4\\.:${PORTSDIR}/graphics/xpm z\\.1\\.:${PORTSDIR}/devel/libz"
by searching the INDEX.  A little additional stickyness, but nothing
insoluble.  If you design the template file right, I could even see
a cgi version of the Makefile generator program. :-)

					Jordan