A plea or sanity in port options menu

[Eitan Adler]

Gonzalo Nemmi wrote:
> On Monday 02 February 2009 6:39:25 pm Bill Moran wrote:
>> In response to Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com>:
>>> On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Bill Moran wrote:
>>>> How about:
>>>>
>>>>       Options for port-fu
>>>> [ ] BRG   Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing
>>>> [X] QFZ   Quantum Freeze Zulu rending
>>>>
>>>> At least that one gives me _some_ idea what those TLAs mean.
>>> There was talk some time ago of having extended descriptions.  Several
>>> ideas, but the one that made the most sense to me would be a box at the
>>> bottom that would display a description as you moved through the
>>> options:
>>>
>>> [.] BRG
>>> [X] QFZ
>>>
>>> Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing
>>>
>>> with the . representing the cursor/highlight position.  Move down and
>>> the bottom line would change to say "Quantum Freeze Zulu rending".  The
>>> nice thing about the box at the bottom is it would give a full line or
>>> possibly several lines for explanations.
>>>
>>> Seems like it could be added without breaking the existing system with
>>> an optional OPTIONS_DESC variable that would correspond with OPTIONS.
>>> I don't really know how hard that would be; ideas are cheap,
>>> implementation more costly.
>> I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports
>> infrastructure.  I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking
>> the time to describe their options.  A quick test of some ports turns
>> up this one:
>>
>>  [ ] OPENGL  OpenGL support
>>
>> True but useless.  How about:
>>
>>  [ ] OPENGL  Use OpenGL graphics library
>>
>> ...which, at least give the user _some_ idea what they're doing.
>>
>> OpenGL probably isn't a good example, however.  It's pretty easy to Google
>> OpenGL and figure out what it is.  Here's some more bizarre options:
>>
>>  [X] EPUB          Epub modules
>>  [X] EXTENSIONS    Extensions
>>  [X] TEMPLATE      Templates
>>  [X] TOOLS         Tools
>>
>> I mean, if I enable "Extensions", what happens?  How do I figure out
>> what happens?  I have to read the Makefile, at which point having these
>> options on a menu is pretty pointless.  I mean, I can't even come up
>> with a Google search to help me figure out what "tools" are involved
>> here.
>>
>> There are some ports that do this very well.  For example:
>>  [ ] NLS               Use internationalized messages
>>  [ ] PAM               Build with PAM support (server only)
>>  [ ] LDAP              Build with LDAP authentication support
>>  [ ] MIT_KRB5          Build with MIT's kerberos support
>>  [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5      Builds with Heimdal kerberos support
>>  [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS  Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3)
>>  [X] XML               Build with XML data type (server)
>>  [X] TZDATA            Use internal timezone database (server)
>>  [ ] DEBUG             Builds with debugging symbols
>>  [ ] ICU               Use ICU for unicode collation (server)
>>  [ ] INTDATE           Builds with 64-bit date/time type (server)
>>
>> I mean, a Google on ICU is liable to bring up all sorts of medical drama
>> websites, but I can do a search for "ICU unicode" and find my answer on
>> the first result.  Not only am I told that optimized compiler flags are
>> an option, but I'm told the exact one that will be used (-O3)
>>
>> The porters handbook doesn't seem to offer any helpful advice on these:
>> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/makefile-options.html
>>
>> In fact, the examples it provides are excellent examples of doing it
>> WRONG.
>>
>> Let me see about making a patch to the porters handbook to provide some
>> advice ...
> 
> +1,000,000 on your idea.
> 
> Yes .. you are absolutely right ... even if you know your way around make && 
> gcc && compiling software .. and even if you _really_ know your way around 
> make && gcc && compiling software, there's no chance on earth that anyone can 
> tell what does every single option on every single Makefile actually mean.
> 
> As you pointed out:
> 
> [ ] BRG
> [X] QFZ
> 
> means _nothing_ to 99.9% of the users... Be Really Grumpy? Buy Red Goggles? 
> Quite Faster Zapping?? Quit Filtering Zealots??
> 
> This kind of things really hurts the "good documentation" reputation that 
> FreeBSD has rightfully earned.
> 
> And I do agree with you:
> 
> " I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports 
> infrastructure.  I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking the 
> time to describe their options. "
> 
> And once again .. this is the way to go for me too:
> 
>> There are some ports that do this very well.  For example:
>>  [ ] NLS               Use internationalized messages
>>  [ ] PAM               Build with PAM support (server only)
>>  [ ] LDAP              Build with LDAP authentication support
>>  [ ] MIT_KRB5          Build with MIT's kerberos support
>>  [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5      Builds with Heimdal kerberos support
>>  [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS  Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3)
>>  [X] XML               Build with XML data type (server)
>>  [X] TZDATA            Use internal timezone database (server)
>>  [ ] DEBUG             Builds with debugging symbols
>>  [ ] ICU               Use ICU for unicode collation (server)
>>  [ ] INTDATE           Builds with 64-bit date/time type (server)
> 
> no need to break anything ... just _be_verbose_
> 
> Regards
If you could give me a list of ports which do this I would glad to work
on patches to send to the relevant maintainers.

-- 
Eitan Adler
"Security is increased by designing for the way humans actually behave."
-Jakob Nielsen