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

[Sam Lawrance]

The following reply was made to PR ports/93517; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Sam Lawrance <lawrance at FreeBSD.org>
To: Sideris Michael <msid at daemons.gr>
Cc: freebsd-gnats-submit at FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: ports/93517: Presented usage of Ports in Handbook lacks several important things.
Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 20:15:20 +1100

 On 18/02/2006, at 8:21 AM, Sideris Michael wrote:
 >
 > 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.
 
 It's a feature of make, rather than the ports collection - see make 
 (1) and make.conf(5).  It would still be good to have it documented;  
 can you please send a patch?
 
 Some ports use the OPTIONS framework.  This avoids the need for  
 putting WITH_* in make.conf, because those ports "remember" the  
 settings given to them.
 
 > 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.
 
 Patch? ;-)
 
 > 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.
 
 Yes, it would.  Once I saw some scripts floating around that grepped  
 out the WITH_ knobs from a port.  If you can find it, perhaps you can  
 extended it to work recursively.  Again note that it's not useful for  
 ports using OPTIONS since make config-recursive will do the trick.