Ports with GUI configs

[Chuck Robey]

Garrett Cooper wrote:

>> If you want to see what it is, go look at recent postings on ports 
>> list.  It'll probably get changed, as I get something for folks to 
>> look at and discuss.
> 
>    USE flags are a pain in the ass (former Gentoo user of 3 years). 
> Introducing that type of complexity into a ports system isn't necessary 
> and does unexpected things at times for end-users when developers change 
> variable names or behavior, which happened quite often with Gentoo.
>    make config-all or something similar to have people fill in their 
> desired config info in all of the ncurses config sections would however 
> be a much better idea I think..
> -Garrett

Good point.  My main drive is to stop asking users to OK dependencies to 
specific pieces of software (which most users haven't the least idea 
about), and also to move the gathering of data out of ports-compile-time 
and into system-install-time (perhaps with an update feature as hardware 
changes).  The way that Gentoo did it, if followed slavishly, yes, I 
agree it would just leaad to more confusion.  I got the feeling that you 
are asking for a ncurses sort of app, that would gather data, and tjhen 
be used to control the setting of dependencies?  Is that right?

I would think that the linkage between the program amd the ports could 
be a list like the Gentoo USE lists, but without any direct interface to 
it, so building and maintaining the list becomes the responsibility of 
the program and not clueless users.  That more what you see?  I could 
live with that quiurte easily.

But, such a system is more than could be written directly either in Make 
or using sh ... I mean, you  _could_ use sh, but the software would be 
too complicated to maintain.  Could I use some tool?  I would not 
exactly love doing it in C, but I guess I could do that (I'd rather use 
something like Python, but it's not available in the base, and I think I 
would want this available at system install time.

Please, comment more, I think I like the way you're driving this, so let 
me see if I have really gotten your idea.