ports/93517: Presented usage of Ports in Handbook lacks several important things.

[Sideris Michael]

>Number:         93517
>Category:       ports
>Synopsis:       Presented usage of Ports in Handbook lacks several important things.
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-ports-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Sat Feb 18 08:30:09 GMT 2006
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Sideris Michael
>Release:        
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>Environment:
>Description:
Correct me if I am wrong, but i really tried to search around if there is such a thing or methodology posted somewhere and is linked as an official resource of explaining what I am going to mention below.

I have been using FreeBSD for more than a year. I have read couple of books, a number of Internet resources, I participated in forums as well as thoroughly reading the FreeBSD handbook. A few months ago though I learned the efficient way of working with Ports. Now, what is the problem here.

In the Handbook is stated clearly how to install a port and how to uninstall it and how you can use portupgrade to execute a massive upgrade on the currently installed ports as well as some other stuff. What is really missing from there is the fact that all the WITH knobs someone can find in Makefile can be used in /etc/make.conf as a global configuration. Also, since you mention portupgrade as a tool, which is part of pkgtools, you can mention that, will someone need to customize a port despite the global configuration he or she can use the pkgtools.conf file that comes when you install portupgrade and hence pkgtools. As far as I know, this way, WITH knobs are read both when you issue make install clean or using portupgrade/portinstall.

To conclude, I would like to mention that it would be nice to have a tool, that would read the dependencies of the port you want to install and will print on the screen the available WITH knobs for each dependency separately so that the user can use them in /etc/make.conf to customize his or her environment.
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