cvs commit: ports/devel/gettext Makefile

Oliver Eikemeier eikemeier at fillmore-labs.com
Fri Aug 27 09:03:42 PDT 2004


David O'Brien wrote:

> See my email to freebsd-ports asking about the dependacy on
> textproc/expat2 (Message-ID: <20040823042724.GA64310 at dragon.nuxi.com>)
>
>     The define "HAVE_LIBEXPAT" is the knob gettext uses to specify that
>     'expat' is available.  The problem is only
>     gettext-tools/src/x-glade.c refers to "HAVE_LIBEXPAT"; but x-glade.c
>     never makes it into any of the libs that I can find.
>
> I'l look into seeing how devel/popt could use something that never makes
> it into the gettext libs.  See my email to Kris asking what he would 
> like
> done.

Guess what: the port installs a little more than just libraries. While 
it may be nice the debianize the port, it currently isn't. As for the 
mail to Kris: I guess I just came up with two reason for the need of the 
dependency, or do you need more examples?

> BTW, I would have thought that members of portmgr would be on the
> freebsd-ports list and you could have offered your knowledge before I
> accidently forced you to. :-(

While we are pretty active on freebsd-ports@ and trying to give advice, 
nobody can answer *every* mail. This is the point of the whole 
mentorship stuff: port committers are expected to have some expertise. I 
could tell you at least three methods to find out which part of 
devel/gettext references libexpat, but I'm pretty sure you know all of 
them yourself (or at least I hope so). So instead of having others do 
the work for you, you could have done some research and come up with an 
answer yourself.

With ~ 4200 ports depending directly or indirectly on gettext, 
experience should have told you to be careful. Probably a heads-up to 
portmgr: "I believe the dependency of gettext on libexpat is 
superfluous, do you think it could be removed?" would have been the 
better strategy here...

-Oliver



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