From owner-freebsd-ports Sat Mar 20 17:28:37 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from picnic.mat.net (picnic.mat.net [206.246.122.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8211615023 for ; Sat, 20 Mar 1999 17:28:29 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from chuckr@mat.net) Received: from localhost (chuckr@localhost) by picnic.mat.net (8.9.3/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA94982; Sat, 20 Mar 1999 20:26:35 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1999 20:26:34 -0500 (EST) From: Chuck Robey To: Rich Morin Cc: ports@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Ports Collection nits In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sat, 20 Mar 1999, Rich Morin wrote: > Guise- > > I am using the Ports Collection as a major source of input data for > a developmental online information service. As I work on this, I > will be finding assorted problems in the Collection. Here is the > first installment of general notes; let me know if I am using the > wrong addressee, if you don't want to hear about this stuff, etc. > > Also, if I come up with (putatively :-) cleaner COMMENTS and DESCR > files, should I send them to the MAINTAINER email address, to this > address, or both? (Of course, if no MAINTAINER is listed, I'll use > this address. :-) Probably best to open a PR in all cases. Sometimes the maintainer is too busy (ask me to do things during classes, and see what you get). It's spring break now, I can play! (doing lang/objc right now). > > The snapshot I discuss below was downloaded from ftp.cdrom.com on > 19990318. If you want a copy of the (rather primitive :-) script I > am using to check things out, let me know... > > * Quite a few of the path names from the second and fourth fields of > the INDEX file (e.g., .../print/c2ps-a4/../c2ps-letter/pkg/DESCR) > contain the string "../". This seems unnecessarily convoluted. Is > there a functional reason for this or is it just an artifact (e.g., > of a moved directory or a spin-off package)? This is because those paths are often assembled piece by piece from parts, and one of those parts has ".." in it in a context where it does make sense. The ".." doesn't cause any harm, so no one is terribly interested in fixing it (seeing as making a fix may well break something that uses one of the constituent path parts). > > * Some of the directory names listed in INDEX do not exist in the > downloaded archive: That's often caused by the fact that there's now over 2000 ports, and they are very actively changing. INDEX is not automatically updated, Satoshi updates is pretty regularly, but it does fall out of date by a week or more very often. Not really a big worry. > > /usr/ports/games/pente > /usr/ports/japanese/yatex > /usr/ports/japanese/yatex-xemacs > /usr/ports/net/ircd-hybrid-5 > /usr/ports/x11-toolkits/py-gtk > > * The DESCR file for /usr/ports/net/ascend-radius is empty. That's true, and probably worth a PR. If you watch the ports mailing list for a few days, you'll probably get a good idea of what's a real problem, and what's not. If you aren't sure, opening a PR is the best thing to do. > P.S. I plan to write up the Ports Collection in "Silicon Carny" > (my column in SunWorld Online). Whoever wants to play at > being a critic of _my_ work should let me know... ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@glue.umd.edu | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 213 Lakeside Drive Apt T-1 | Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run picnic (FreeBSD-current) (301) 220-2114 | and jaunt (Solaris7). ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message