Manually registering dependencies for ports

[Garrett Cooper]

On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Thomas Rasmussen <thomas at gibfest.dk> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've been wondering about something: When I write a script or webapp that
> needs some port to run, like a perl module, I install the needed port and
> life is good (tm). A year later when I've completely forgotten about the
> script I go do some spring-cleaning of the ports on the server, and I see
> some perl module that doesn't have any dependencies, and delete it. Fast
> forward a few days when I discover the script doesn't work anymore, cue
> face-palm, remove bullet from foot, etc.
>
> Is there some way I can register a dependency to prevent this ? Like
> adding a flag to an installed port to say "something outside of the ports
> system depends on this" along with a user specified comment string. A
> system like that could result in something like this:
>
> pkg_delete -x p5-something
> pkg_delete: p5-something cant be uninstalled because: "somescript.pl uses
> this module, for the love of everything good do not delete it"
>
> Is something like this already implemented, or does anyone have suggestions
> to where I might begin if I want to make this ? Am I the only FreeBSD
> admin absent-minded enough to have this problem ? :)
>
> Best regards
>
> Thomas Steen Rasmussen
>
> PS: I know that this kind of hand-holding is uncommon in FreeBSD. We
> allow all kinds of foot-shooting, but a safeguard like this would be a nice
> improvement to an (IMO) already excellent ports system.

    It would probably just be better to create ports Makefiles for
this and then run a make install ; that way you have all of the
required metadata for the package you just created. If you go this
route you'll need several skeleton files to create a complete port.
You can look at any port, or here's another simple example port (
http://p4db.freebsd.org/depotTreeBrowser.cgi?FSPC=//depot/user/gcooper/ports/devel/atf&HIDEDEL=NO
). Feel free to skip the pkg-deinstall script.
HTH,
-Garrett