ports/120013: make describe fails

[Mark Linimon]

The following reply was made to PR ports/120013; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: linimon at lonesome.com (Mark Linimon)
To: User & <paul at amy.home.net>
Cc: FreeBSD-gnats-submit at FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: ports/120013: make describe fails
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:30:36 -0600

 You may not be familiar with the fact that we have a periodic process
 that does a 'make describe' over the whole ports tree as a sanity check.
 Failure results are posted to freebsd-port at FreeBSD.org with the Subject
 line "INDEX build failed for <osversion>.x".
 
 In this case I'm not seeing a message that got posted corresponding
 to this particular failure.
 
 Sometimes what this means is that you have synched to the repository
 during a period where a port was being added or removed, and thus
 you have a port listed in devel/Makefile that has already been
 removed.  This can cause this problem.  The proper cure in that
 situation is to resynch.
 
 However, other times there can be odd problems in a port (something
 in the Makefile that doesn't work right with some global flag
 settings, for instance).  Those require more detective work to
 diagnose.
 
 fwiw, I can't duplicate the error here with sources from a day or two
 ago.  I'll try to re-cvsup and run it again.  (OTOH I tend to trust
 the period script more than my own testing, since my local ports tree
 is usually modified in some way.)
 
 mcl