Call for feedback on a Ports-collection change

[Max Laier]

At 2:33 AM +0100 1/9/04, Max Laier wrote:
 I suspect I was too brief in my initial message.  I had started
> with a much-longer message, but figured everyone would give up
> on it before trying to read it all...
> 
> The simple-program is *only* for pulling information out of the
> suggested new file.  That's all it will do.  You might run it
> with a parameter of "patches", and it will create the directory
>      work/patches
> and then fill that directory with files patch.001 through
> patch.042.  Then the standard port-processing would apply
> *those* patch files, instead of each port (as it comes from
> cvsup) containing a directory of patch files.

Indeed, that makes it much more understandable.

> >1) Changes are much harder to do:
> >    With the currently used scheme it's fairly easy to add a
> >    patch when needed.
> 
> I do not expect this to get any harder.  (of course, I might
> be wrong on that)

At least you have to do an additional export (from the big file) and (in the 
end) an import.

> >2) Changes are much harder to track:
> 
> On the contrary, changes should be *easier* to track.  All the
> information for any given port will be in two files.  This will
> not be true for all ports (particularly for ports which have a
> lot of patch files).

Look a the full quote: "changes might be spread all over the new big file", 
you can't come around this and it's a pain to read this (even - or especially 
- in a unified diff).

> >3) It will get harder to create ports:
> 
> I really do not expect this to happen -- particularly since
> the simple-program will know how to find the appropriate
> information for EITHER old-style or new-style ports.  Thus,
> it CANNOT be harder to do than it is now, because someone
> can just do exactly what they do now and the makefiles will
> handle it all.

Yes, I got your idea completely wrong.

Still, if you want to do this: I'd suggest to avoid to write new tools that 
need compilation, there are quite a few default unix tools that can do the 
work for you: tar, shar ... which are in the default install. The additional 
targets to bsd.port.mk could be done in a very small and clean way.

--
Best regards,				| max at love2party.net
Max Laier				| ICQ #67774661
http://pf4freebsd.love2party.net/	| mlaier at EFnet