Second "RFC" on pkg-data idea for ports

[Garance A Drosihn]

At 1:33 PM +0200 4/14/04, Dirk Meyer wrote:
>Garance A Drosihn schrieb:,
>
>>  I wasn't looking for XML per se, so much as just something that
>>  would be easy for a program to process.  This should allow for
>>  pretty arbitrary text for the values of each section, in the
>>  same way that the present plain-files would accept anything.
>>  No need for \'s to escape double-quote characters, or worries
>>  about embedded ${} or any other characters which might be
>>  special to make or to /bin/sh.
>
>A Makefile is very easy to process.
>We have all the tools for this.

I noticed how easy it was when the pkg-comment -> COMMENT
change broke the ports tree.  That's exactly what got me
thinking about this project in the first place.

I'm sorry, but I really don't think it's the right format for
storing and manipulating arbitrary data.  Yes, you can pound
any value into make variables if you hammer hard enough, but
for some kinds of (arbitrary) data I (personally) think it's
too much effort for too little reward.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad at freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu