prebuild sanity checks

[Benjamin Lutz]

>>>Another option might be a new variable (or variables) that ports that
>>>tend to break spectacularly and unobviously can set like:
>>>
>>>BUILD_DEVS=	null zero
>>
>>As a potential user of such a variable, I wonder how I'm supposed to
>>figure out which basic system facilities are required by a given piece
>>of software.
>
> Either by having it fail and debugging it or by doing a build with one
> of the common culprates missing from devfs.  In theory it would see that
> you could do a periodic sweep using the package cluster.

I can't test every possible environment as a ports maintainer. I can't
even test every possible standard FreeBSD release. If there's just 10
different things that are being tested for, the cluster would have to
test for each of them in turn - sounds like quite a bit of work with
13000 ports.

>>I think the right thing to do here would be to have the software react
>>more sensibly to such a problem, ie bail out with an error message. In
>>other words: have the people upstream change their software.
>
> In theory yes.  In practice, I'm sure a lot of software authors won't
> care about supporting this environment.

True. As a ports maintainer, I'm afraid to say, neither do I.

I can see the value of this though. I've set up a couple of jails too, I
know how annoying it can be to track down dependencies. Why not start
collecting data on which software needs which system facilities outside
the ports system? Set up a website with a public database/wiki? That
way, non-FreeBSD users would be helped too.

Cheers
Benjamin
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