ports/79939: Need a shell access to WRKDIR

[Joao Carlos Mendes Luis]

>Number:         79939
>Category:       ports
>Synopsis:       Need a shell access to WRKDIR
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-ports-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          change-request
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Thu Apr 14 21:40:20 GMT 2005
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Joao Carlos Mendes Luis
>Release:        FreeBSD 4.11-STABLE i386
>Organization:
>Environment:

FreeBSD 5.4-RC2

>Description:

Sometimes, when debugging a program, it is easier to use the ports as
the source framework.  Many times I've done the sequence:

cd /usr/ports/xxx/yyy
make
cd work/yyy

But if we put the WRKDIRPREFIX into another place, this feature is not as easy.

A very useful workaround would be to create a symbolink link to the real
WRKDIR in the current directory, like it was done for system sources in
the earlier days of FreeBSD.  But this would probably defeats the main reason
to have a WRKDIRPREFIX, which is a readonly PORTSDIR.

So, a quick and dirty useful option is to add a make parameter to create the
symbolic link, if possible, and drop an error if not.

Also, some kind of macro output could be very useful.  Let's say we had the
possibility to do a "make showvar WRKDIR" os somethink alike.  This would
be very generic and make it possible to create shell aliases to do as
intended and much more.  Let it be really generic, and we could make some
checks like "make showvar RM", "make showvar ARCH" or what else imagination
creates.

This could be useful also in the main system sources, not only in the
ports subsystem.

Hope this idea make through whoever reads this.

>How-To-Repeat:

See description.

>Fix:

Dunno.  Maybe a ports Meister is needed to walk through the ports make system.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: