Re: HEADS-UP: Upcoming move of WWW definitions in all ports

From: Shawn Webb <shawn.webb_at_hardenedbsd.org>
Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2022 19:08:40 UTC
On Tue, Sep 06, 2022 at 08:09:24PM +0200, Stefan Esser wrote:
> PortMgr has just accepted a change that has been in the making for some time:
> 
> The move of the "WWW:" entries at the end of the ports' pkg-descr files into
> the ports' Makefiles in the form of "WWW=" definitions.
> 
> The WWW lines will be put into the maintainer block, immediately following
> the MAINTAINER and COMMENT lines.
> 
> If there is more than one WWW: line a pkg-descr file, one URL will be
> selected to be moved into the Makefile, the other URLs will get a label
> "See also:" instead of "WWW:".
> 
> The following are examples taken from some port before and after the planned
> conversion:
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> libmspack is a portable library for some loosely related Microsoft compression
> formats.
> 
> WWW: https://www.cabextract.org.uk/libmspack/
> WWW: https://github.com/kyz/libmspack
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> This pkg-descr file would be converted to:
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> libmspack is a portable library for some loosely related Microsoft compression
> formats.
> 
> See also: https://github.com/kyz/libmspack
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> The WWW: entry that is deleted from pkg-descr will be moved into the Makefile:
> 
> MAINTAINER=	sunpoet@FreeBSD.org
> COMMENT=	Library for Microsoft compression formats
> WWW=		https://www.cabextract.org.uk/libmspack/
> 
> 
> There will be a total of 4 commits to the ports and docs repositories:
> 
> 1) This update adds support for the WWW= field in Makefiles.
>    It is based on a patch submitted by tcberner in review D34979.
> 
> 	https://reviews.freebsd.org/D36434
> 
> 2) Documentation change for the English language version of the porter's
>    handbook.
> 
> 	https://reviews.freebsd.org/D36369
> 
> 3) Update of all ports' Makefiles to add the "WWW=" entry.
> 
> 4) Update of all pkg-descr files to remove WWW: lines moved to the Makefile.
> 
> 
> The portlint port will be updated "soonish" to check for this use of WWW=
> and it will warn about left over WWW: in pkg-descr files.
> 
> These commits are planned for the current week - I'm only waiting for the
> portlint update to be pushed to the repository by its maintainer.
> 
> There are currently 1256 ports without WWW: entry in the pkg-descr file.
> I'll open a PR for each affected maintainer to document the missing entries,
> these should be added after the conversion wherever a suitable URL exists.
> 

Hey Stefan,

How would this impact downstream forks of the FreeBSD ports tree (if
at all)? Will there be some transition time whereby the WWW line in
pkg-descr is still respected? If a port hasn't made the switch to the
Makefile-based format, would the port fail to build?

Thanks,

-- 
Shawn Webb
Cofounder / Security Engineer
HardenedBSD

https://git.hardenedbsd.org/hardenedbsd/pubkeys/-/raw/master/Shawn_Webb/03A4CBEBB82EA5A67D9F3853FF2E67A277F8E1FA.pub.asc