Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 00:36:38 +1100 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: wannabee porter in the poo Message-ID: <20020309003638.A84857@welearn.com.au>
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I thought the hard part was over when I worked out how to get this
set of tiny audio utilities to compile, but then I read the porters
handbook and discovered that the puzzle was just beginning :-)
The real question is, should I give up, smarten up, try something
easier, or keep asking questions like these ones?
The sources are in a .tar.gz file as usual, but there's another
file containing man pages for some utilities, which is a .zip, and
a .txt file of sample data which could be omitted but is a big help.
Here's my list of puzzles so far...
Two archive types:
I can't answer the question whether it's plain .tar.gz or not,
because it's one of each, and that's got me confused for starters.
There must be something in the porting docco that I'm not grokking.
Zip file:
I see that if USE_ZIP is set, then unzip will be used, but
doesn't that require the unzip port to be installed? Or is
USE_ZIP sufficient to imply and act on that dependency?
Perhaps a pointer to a similar port as an example would make
sense of what I have to do with this.
Man pages:
The man pages are written by another person who ported the utilities
to a different operating system, and their text states that they are
for that OS. And not all utilities have man pages. Maybe the right
thing to do would be to write FreeBSD man page for each utility, and
include them in the port? (How/Where?) That would seem to relieve
the zip file problem mentioned above, since the zip file wouldn't
be needed... until I give my man pages back to the author and he
might add them to the next version's zip file :-) How should I
best tackle this situation, and if I should write man pages
do we have any guidelines for doing that for ports?
Optional data file:
The little .txt file is downloaded separately from the same
site as the others. I'm not sure yet whether I can figure out
how to incorporate it from the distfiles directory, but there
is a more daunting issue. Say the data file disappears from
the author's site, or gets augmented, that would stop the port
from building. But people could still use the programs without
it, it's just a lot more work to learn how if they haven't done
it before. Is there a standard way of dealing with this situation?
Converting makefile:
The makefile that comes with the sources is in DOS text
format (CR/LF), and the notes warn that it needs to be
changed over before compiling to avoid errors.
It produces the most astonishing patch you've ever seen :-)
How should I really be tackling this one?
(If these questions are not of general interest but some kind
soul still wants to help, we might do it off list and
report back later for the benefit of archives readers.)
--
Regards,
-*Sue*-
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