New pkg-message[.in] guideline idea

[Doug Barton]

On 06/23/10 07:46, Philip M. Gollucci wrote:
> On 06/23/10 14:40, Wesley Shields wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 02:16:07PM +0200, David DEMELIER wrote:
>>> Hi freebsd-ports@,
>>>
>>> I would like to propose you something that I would like to be done.
>>> It's a cosmetic, useless thing but I like when things are made
>>> homogeneously.

I admit that my initial reaction was mixed in the sense that I don't
like removing the ability of maintainers to be creative without good
reason. However after thinking about this (and reviewing the other
posts) I think that the benefits of being consistent so that the user
knows what is a message and what is not are worth it.

>>> That is the problem : as you can see, sometimes port
>>> tells a message to the user but some maintainers used delimiters to
>>> begin/end the message such as a lot of "***" or "===" or blank spaces.
>>>
>>> If you already did use NetBSD pkgsrc, you can see that *every* MESSAGE
>>> is composed like this :
>>>
>>> ===========================================================================
>>> $NetBSD: MESSAGE,v 1.1.1.1 2008/10/20 09:28:51 wiz Exp $

Not to dive too quickly into the details, but I would see no value in
actually displaying the CVS $Id to the user. :)

>>> Note you need audio/audacious-plugins to actually play music.
>>> ===========================================================================
>>>
>>> I would do something like this to the FreeBSD ports, if you agree with
>>> me I can check every messages and modify them. I can also put
>>> something in the FreeBSD porter's handbook to write a "pkg-message
>>> template"
>>>
>>> I know that there is much more important work to do, that's why I can
>>> take all this work for myself.

That's great! When I first started in FreeBSD I wasn't new to
programming but I was new to Unix, and taking on projects like this was
a great way to get involved, give back to the community, and learn more
about the system.

>> I think a better solution is to do what portmaster does and display all
>> the pkg-message files as one of the last things it does. I had a patch
>> to do this sitting in portmgr@ queue but it needs more work.

FWIW, portmaster users have commented to me many times that this is one
of their favorite features, and that they find it very useful. So much
so that I wish it were my idea, but it actually came from a user. :) I
think it would be great if the ports infrastructure were able to do this
as well.

>> A combination of some standardization of pkg-message files and
>> displaying them all at the end of a build would be best.
> Yes thats definitely a needed feature.
> 
> I think we need 2 things:
> 
> 1) All pkg-message whether .in or not go
>    through the 'sed' that SUB_LIST/PLIST_SUB do.

I like this idea better than forcing them all to be in /files, and I
can't see any reason not to do it.

> 2) You collect them in to /var/db/pkg and loop
>    and display at end.
> 
> As a consequence all formatting should be removed from the individual
> pkg-message[.in] files and added in #2.

I'm ambivalent about this. My first thought was that the formatting
should happen in step #1. What portmaster does is build each port one at
a time, and it makes a note if a port has a pkg-message. Then it does
what you suggest in #2 by cat'ing them all to $PAGER. However, thinking
more about it I could see how not doing the formatting until step 2
could work, so however it turns out to be "easiest" should be fine.


Doug

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