interactive ports - the plague

Dominic Fandrey kamikaze at bsdforen.de
Mon Mar 3 18:55:55 UTC 2008


RW wrote:
> On Mon, 03 Mar 2008 10:24:21 +0100
> Dominic Fandrey <kamikaze at bsdforen.de> wrote:
> 
>> I don't mind ports that use the config framework. You can deal with
>> them without trouble by setting BATCH, using portmaster or
>> portconfig-recursive from bsdadminscripts.
>>
>> But I find ports like ghostscript-gpl that open an ncurses dialogue
>> between configure and build stage very annoying. They are the reason
>> one wakes up in the morning and finds out that instead of having
>> finished all updates, the machine hasn't even started updating,
>> because it's just hanging there, waiting with a config dialogue that
>> doesn't even remember what I choose last time.
>>
>> I cannot find any policy on interactive ports in the Porters'
>> Handbook. Maybe there aught to be one.
> 
> Setting BATCH is supposed to prevent genuinely interactive ports from
> building (that's actually the original purpose of BATCH).

But this will also keep the config screens away from me, which can be handled 
before all builds quite comfortably.

> In my experience ghostscript-gpl will build with default options if
> you set  BATCH, or are you saying that you need a specific non-default
> option?

I'd prefer the port to use the ports config framework. In that case I'd even 
bother to go through the list of drivers and make choices. At the moment I 
just select OK, because what I choose won't be remembered the next time anyway.


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