ident strings in pkg-plist

[Doug Barton]

On 10/4/2010 4:15 AM, Alexander Leidinger wrote:
> Quoting Doug Barton <dougb at FreeBSD.org> (from Sun, 03 Oct 2010 15:58:00
> -0700):
>
>> Changing the list to have a real discussion about this.
>>
>> On 10/3/2010 3:49 PM, John Hein wrote:
>>> I'll mention that
>>> it has come in handy for me in the past. I put it into the category
>>> of ident strings in binaries. It has a similar utility.
>>>
>>> Because I find it useful in maintaining and using a port/package,
>>> I've been one that has added it to pkg-plist in the past.
>>
>> I'm curious about what your use case for the information is. You can
>> always know if you have the latest version of the plist via cvs,
>> c[v]sup, portsnap, etc. Other than knowing that you have the latest
>> version, what utility does the $Id string in the file itself have?
>
> I see a value in this if:
> - you use a port with non-default options which change the plist
> and
> - a change is made to the plist which affects your use case,
> but the revision of the port is not changed (because the change
> only affects the non-default options and as such do not change
> the default package)
>
> Normally you can not detect after a while if the plist in the port is
> what is used in /var/db/pkg or not (the dates in /var/db/pkg may change
> when portupgrade is used).
>
> If this matters and rectifies a new rule to include an ident string into
> the plist or not... personally I wouldn't object if it is added.

I think I understand what you're describing here, and if so you could 
probably count the number of people it would apply to on one hand. :) 
I'm not sure justifies adding it to all ports.

In fact, my vote would be to remove it from all ports where it exists 
currently, but I really don't want to push that rock up hill.


Doug

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