An idea about forbidden ports

[Mike Silbersack]

I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not, but I'm going to throw this idea 
out there in hopes that it might be of some use.

I was thinking how this error message occurs:

podysseus# pkg_add -r vmware3
Error: FTP Unable to get 
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6-current/Latest/vmware3.tbz: 
File unavailable (e.g., file not found, no access)

But really, we do have vmware3, it's just not packaged due to it being 
marked FORBIDDEN.

So, would it be a useful idea to include dummy packages for FORBIDDEN 
programs so that people know that they exist?  When you did pkg_add -r 
vmware3 have it grab a dummy package that just has a shell script that 
tells the person why the package doesn't exist, suggest how to go about 
installing that port, and return an error value so that the package isn't 
successfully installed.

This would be of immense help once we grow some sort of package manager 
system, as it would allow everything to be listed.

It might be a problem with portupgrade -P, though.

Just a thought,

Mike "Silby" Silbersack