Date: Wed, 30 May 2012 14:21:32 -0700 From: Kevin Oberman <kob6558@gmail.com> To: Alberto Villa <avilla@freebsd.org> Cc: ports@freebsd.org, Baptiste Daroussin <bapt@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Options name, descriptions and consistency Message-ID: <CAN6yY1ts3RZrsE9ZD4nPGv2D%2BHpYNis40mAprK6rxxrqozUgJg@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <CAJp7RHY_xXBX%2B5nwAwDBR%2Bk%2Bf_Ho9%2BROVCT-3z54hR0b6dFfbA@mail.gmail.com> References: <20120530063334.GD9952@ithaqua.etoilebsd.net> <CAJp7RHY_xXBX%2B5nwAwDBR%2Bk%2Bf_Ho9%2BROVCT-3z54hR0b6dFfbA@mail.gmail.com>
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On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Alberto Villa <avilla@freebsd.org> wrote: > On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 8:33 AM, Baptiste Daroussin <bapt@freebsd.org> wrote: >> On of the reasons of bsd.options.desc.mk is to be able to share common options >> and descriptions, to have better consistency between ports and to have general >> meaning descriptions that make more sense, has anyone can improve the >> description of an option. > > While I really like what bsd.options.desc.mk is supposed to do, I > would like to recommend to any committer/maintainer (and I will > personally submit a patch for the soon-to-come documentation and for > the file itself) to think before always relying on on default option > descriptions. > > Sometimes just saying "Enable XXX support" doesn't mean anything to > the user, and a more explanatory text would be far better, explaining > maybe what feature one is about to enable instead of just what he is > going to depend on. > > So, please, do not hesitate to redefine option descriptions for your > ports if you feel you can add more information for the port specific > case. +1 Ports in multimedia are a perfect example of this problem. Many ports have dozens of options. While some (like enabling codecs of muxers) are either obvious or easy to ind out about in Wikipedia or by googling, others can be quite obscure. The short line in options really is little or no help for "Enable VPFRE support". Even in simpler ports, it is hard to know the effect of selecting an option in the particular case of port, especially when it is sometimes not obvious what an option has to do with a port. -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer E-mail: kob6558@gmail.com
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