autoamtic plists (was: Re: cvs commit: ports/audio/linux-openal bsd.linux.mk)

[Vizion]

On Saturday 03 December 2005 07:21,  the author Alexander Leidinger 
contributed to the dialogue on-
 Re: autoamtic plists (was: Re: cvs commit: ports/audio/linux-openal 
bsd.linux.mk): 

>On Fri, 2 Dec 2005 20:04:07 +0100
>
>Jean-Yves Lefort <jylefort at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>> On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 18:06:08 +0100
>>
>> Alexander Leidinger <Alexander at Leidinger.net> wrote:
>> > >> >> - why do you use different ways of specifying the paths in DESCR
>> > >> >>    and MD5_FILE?
>> > >> >> - why do you specify DESCR at all?
>> > >> >
>> > >> > The idea is to use the FreeBSD native port's pkg-descr.
>> > >>
>> > >> I don't think this is good. I think the descr should mention that the
>> > >> ports provide the linux versions of the port.
>> > >
>> > > It's obvious from the package name and comment. But once again, people
>> > > are free to bypass this helper if they don't like it.
>> >
>> > It may be obvious for us, but not obvious for others. I like it to be
>> > unambiguos. Let's do it the other way around (POLA): If someone want's
>> > to override it, he can set it to the FreeBSD port description in the
>> > port itself.
>>
>> Shrug. Ok.
>
>Thanks.
>
>> > >> automatic plist generator to write their own plists. It also allows
>> > >> to look up the contents of the port without a need to install it. And
>> > >> we're able to answer questions like "which port installs file X". So
>> > >> we get the good features of both worlds, don't you think?
>> > >
>> > > I've added new-plist and NO_AUTOMATIC_PLIST for auto plist haters.
>> >
>> > This doesn't address the "lookup" and "will-be-installed-by" parts above
>> > (ok, they are the same, but...). These are major topics. You can read on
>> > ports@ from this week about someone who tries to write an application
>> > which does something like this but has problems because of the automatic
>> > plists. Having the static plists (auto-generated or by hand) in the
>> > tree, also helps in support requests, since someone with experience just
>> > can tell "install port X" to a newbie, even if he doesn't know anything
>> > about the port in question himself.
>> >
>> > So there's demand, and we mostly can satisfy it, but when we go the "all
>> > automatic" way, we can't anymore.
>> >
>> > I can understand that with a really good automatic mechanism, there will
>> > be less errors in the plist (specially some like those I produced in the
>> > last two weeks), but we can have the good part of this mechanism and the
>> > good part of plists in the tree just with the "new-plist" target.
>> >
>> > Are there any technical arguments which makes it mandatory to use your
>> > version of install-time generated plists instead of my proposal to
>> > commit the automatically generated plist?
>>
>> We have already discussed this:
>>
>> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/cvs-ports/2005-September/071826.html
>
>And the metadata infrastructure you outlined in this thread isn't here.
>So the concerns which are raised in the discussion starting in
>http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2005-January/019974.html
>can't be met.

And they should be!

>
>Since your switch to install-time plist generation would result in
>reduced usability of the ports tree, at least for those people which
>are able to read a plist or at least how to extract some information
>out of it, I ask you again to go the "commit the autogenerated plist"
>way in bsd.linuxrpm.mk to respect POLA of those people (BTW: this would
>be the majority of people which participated in the thread I started in
>January). It doesn't result in much more work (just a "make new-plist")
>and provides the same feature while addressing all concerns noted in
>"my" thread.
>
>BTW: most of my commits today to the linux-* ports contained changes to
>the plist which I autogenerated with the "new-plist" target of
>x11-toolkits/linux-gtk. After autogenerating the plist I had to modify
>the plist to DTRT. If you can come up with a smarter way of
>autogenerating the plist, the work involved until you're be able to
>commit a generated plist (after updating the version number of the port
>and fetching the distfiles) is negligible.
>
>Bye,
>Alexander.

-- 
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