LATEST_LINK unique or not?

[Dan Langille]

On 24 Aug 2004 at 13:35, Oliver Eikemeier wrote:

> Dan Langille wrote:
> 
> > On 23 Aug 2004 at 22:52, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> >
> >> On Mon, Aug 23, 2004 at 07:00:32PM -0400, Dan Langille wrote:
> >>> On 24 Aug 2004 at 0:37, Oliver Eikemeier wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Dan Langille wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Is LATEST_LINK supposed to be unique? It's not. There's about 201
> >>>>> ports which have duplicate values.
> >>>>
> >>>> It is, expect when NO_LATEST_LINK is set (in which case no latest 
> >>>> link
> >>>> exists). Did you filtr out these cases? Everything else is bug, Kris 
> >>>> did
> >>>> some survey AFAIK.
> >>>
> >>> I obtained my list from the output of "make -V LATEST_LINK" and paid
> >>> no attention to NO_LATEST_LINK.
> >>>
> >>> Are you saying LATEST_LINK must be ignored if NO_LATEST_LINK is set?
> >>> Why is this not done programatically?  i.e. output an empty string.
> >>
> >> The only reason is because LATEST_LINK was originally used only within
> >> bsd.port.mk in situations where NO_LATEST_LINK is tested.  Perhaps
> >> you're using it for something else now that might justify changing the
> >> behaviour.
> 
> FWIIW, the real `fix' would be to require uniqueness of LATEST_LINK, 
> even when NO_LATEST_LINK is set. I think we have more than one use for a 
> unique package name without version number. Should I just make a patch 
> for the tree?
> 
> > I added the LATEST_LINK value to FreshPorts because I was told it was
> > the name of the package.  This information is now used to provide
> > this information: To add the package: pkg_add -r bacula
> 
> This is correct, but there may be situations when a package does not 
> exist (NO_PACKAGE) or you have to specify the exact url (NO_LATEST_LINK).

FreshPorts is recording neither NO_PACKAGE nor NO_LATEST_LINK.  I 
think it should.  At present, the FreshPorts information supplied in 
the "To add the package:" field is sometimes incorrect.  These 
additional bits will correct that.

> > LATEST_LINK may also be used by other websites that wish to link to
> > FreshPorts but have only the package name. This differs from the
> > conventional category/port path used by FreshPorts.  For example,
> > http://beta.freshports.org/?package=bacula will redirect you to
> > http://beta.freshports.org/sysutils/bacula/
> >
> > It would be good if LATEST_LINK was empty if it was not meant to be
> > used.  However, I don't want to break existing usage if we do that.
> 
> As said above: I think a global unique LATEST_LINK is beneficial, and 
> since we already have something like this in CVSROOT-ports/modules, it 
> shouldn't be too difficult.

I'm assuming that whatever solution is taken, make -V will still be 
the method for obtaining this information.
-- 
Dan Langille : http://www.langille.org/