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Date:      Sun, 22 Aug 1999 23:03:49 +0100
From:      Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org>
To:        Satoshi - Ports Wraith - Asami <asami@freebsd.org>
Cc:        Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org>, ports@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Should every package also have a port?
Message-ID:  <19990822230349.A72888@catkin.nothing-going-on.org>
In-Reply-To: <vqcso5cp5rc.fsf@silvia.hip.berkeley.edu>; from Satoshi - Ports Wraith - Asami on Sun, Aug 22, 1999 at 01:40:55AM -0700
References:  <19990821173427.A73931@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> <vqcso5cp5rc.fsf@silvia.hip.berkeley.edu>

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On Sun, Aug 22, 1999 at 01:40:55AM -0700, Satoshi - Ports Wraith - Asami wrote:
>  * The FreeBSD Documentation (FAQ, Handbook, et al) will shortly be available
>  * as FreeBSD packages, suitable for pkg_add(1).
> 
> Are the methods for automatically building these checked in to the
> repository?  (I.e., is there a place in the doc tree where I can go
> and type "make doc-packages" and have all the packages built?)

Not yet.  I posted a patch to docproj.docbook.mk to -doc yesterday that
does it.  Given the recent furore, I'm trying to avoid committing 
stuff to the tree that I haven't sent out as patches first.  I'm sure
you can understand why :-)

With the patch applied you still need to do some extra work.  
Specifically, you need to put a "COMMENT" and "DESCR" file in each 
directory as well.

Are packages *required* to have a COMMENT and a DESCR?  I assume 
COMMENT is mandatory, and pkg_create(1) doesn't list "-d" as an optional
argument, so I assume not.

> Also, what is the reason why you prefer to build this yourself?  (I
> asked the same question the last time you brought it up but don't
> remember your reply.)
> 
> If you just put a "port" like the one in /usr/ports/japanese/handbook,
> the packages will be built automatically by the package building
> machines.  They update the doc tree automatically before the build, so
> they will give people very fresh packages a few times a week.

Partly because they're not ports, so why put them in the ports tree?  
It's also one more level of indirection.  If someone wants to build
packages of the formatted documentation then they should be able to
do it with just the doc/ tree checked out (IMHO).

With the current (ports/japanese/handbook) approach, if you want to 
understand how to build a doc package you have to be able to read and
understand the ports Makefiles.  These are big, complicated, and do lots
of things as well as package building.  The doc/ Makefile's are considerably
smaller, so it's easier for the interested proto-hacker to see what's
going on.

>  *     % cd /usr/ports/fdp/faq        [1]
>  *     % make "FORMATS=html html-split" LANG=en_US.ISO_8859-1 install
>  * 
>  * would just run the equivalent of
>  * 
>  *     % pkg_add ftp://.../faq-en_US.ISO_8859-1-html.tgz
>  *     % pkg_add ftp://.../faq-en_US.ISO_8859-1-html-split.tgz
>  * 
>  * and where "make package" would be a no-op.  Also, there could be no 
>  * checksum file, because the documentation packages would be rebuilt daily
>  * (or, at the very least, weekly).
>  * 
>  * Personally, I don't think this is worth the hassle.  But I'm not a ports 
>  * guy, so I figure the final call is in your hands.
> 
> No, if the "port" is a something like that, it's definitely not worth
> it.  

Right, that's pretty much all it would be.  

Part of the aim of the recent repo changes is to make it much, much 
easier to build the docs.  So if someone has all the applications installed
so that

    # cd /usr/ports/japanese/handbook
    # make install

works, I'd much rather they were told to do

    # cd /usr/doc/ja_JP.eucJP/books/handbook
    # make install

Here's another good reason why not -- as you've indicated in another 
message, the ports/ tree is now dependent on the structure and 
organisation of the doc/ tree.  I think this kind of dependency is wrong.
We should be trying to make these things more independent, not bring 
them closer together.

N
-- 
 [intentional self-reference] can be easily accommodated using a blessed,
 non-self-referential dummy head-node whose own object destructor severs
 the links.
    -- Tom Christiansen in <375143b5@cs.colorado.edu>


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