Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:36:11 -0400 From: Wesley Shields <wxs@FreeBSD.org> To: Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@freebsd.org> Cc: ports@freebsd.org, Andrew Reilly <andrew-freebsd@areilly.bpc-users.org> Subject: Re: There is no way to know what port options mean (in general) Message-ID: <20080326133611.GD23226@atarininja.org> In-Reply-To: <20080326093858.GA78756@eos.sc1.parodius.com> References: <20080326053328.GA29448@duncan.reilly.home> <20080326093858.GA78756@eos.sc1.parodius.com>
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On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 02:38:58AM -0700, Jeremy Chadwick wrote: > On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 04:33:28PM +1100, Andrew Reilly wrote: > > "make config" in many port directories produces an interactive > > dialog where one may select various make environment variables > > to be set. There is a one line description of each flag, to help > > one make this selection. Unfortunately, in many situations, this > > description is unhelpful, as flag FOO will have description "foo > > support", or possiblly "libfoo support". Unless one is fairly > > well familiar with both the package and the libraries, one can > > not readily know what the implications of setting these controls > > one way or the other is. > > What you want is something like what some ports offer (but it's a > per-port thing): "make showconfig", which describes all the available > knobs in detail. The "showconfig" target is actually not a per-port thing, though I suppose some ports could over-ride it. By default it doesn't give any more information than what is contained in the "config" screen. > I'm not saying what you want is unreasonable -- it's very reasonable. > > But there's no existing ports framework for documenting OPTIONS features > in verbose detail for all ports which use OPTIONS. At this time it's a > "per port" thing, and up to the port maintainer. > > Solving this problem: > > I don't agree with something like a pkg-options-descr file in each port, > because that drastically increases the number of inodes used on the > filesystem. Simultaneously, sticking long and verbose texts inside of > the Makefile only clutters things. While, it has to go somewhere and as a maintainer I have no problem printing out a description of each option inside a custom target. What's important is that there be some consistency in what that target is called. Even better would be to provide a framework to ease the work maintainers have to do. I envision the following: - For each available option have a variable called DESC_$FOO which is a string which describes that option in detail. - Whatever that target is called should be in bsd.ports.mk and output the contents of DESC_$FOO. Maybe I'll work on this in my free time. :) -- WXS
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