A plea or sanity in port options menu
Wesley Shields
wxs at FreeBSD.org
Wed Feb 4 04:19:14 PST 2009
On Mon, Feb 02, 2009 at 03:39:25PM -0500, Bill Moran wrote:
> In response to Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com>:
>
> > On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Bill Moran wrote:
> >
> > > How about:
> > >
> > > Options for port-fu
> > > [ ] BRG Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing
> > > [X] QFZ Quantum Freeze Zulu rending
> > >
> > > At least that one gives me _some_ idea what those TLAs mean.
> >
> > There was talk some time ago of having extended descriptions. Several
> > ideas, but the one that made the most sense to me would be a box at the
> > bottom that would display a description as you moved through the
> > options:
> >
> > [.] BRG
> > [X] QFZ
> >
> > Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing
> >
> > with the . representing the cursor/highlight position. Move down and
> > the bottom line would change to say "Quantum Freeze Zulu rending". The
> > nice thing about the box at the bottom is it would give a full line or
> > possibly several lines for explanations.
> >
> > Seems like it could be added without breaking the existing system with
> > an optional OPTIONS_DESC variable that would correspond with OPTIONS.
> > I don't really know how hard that would be; ideas are cheap,
> > implementation more costly.
>
> I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports
> infrastructure. I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking
> the time to describe their options. A quick test of some ports turns
> up this one:
>
> [ ] OPENGL OpenGL support
>
> True but useless. How about:
>
> [ ] OPENGL Use OpenGL graphics library
>
> ...which, at least give the user _some_ idea what they're doing.
>
> OpenGL probably isn't a good example, however. It's pretty easy to Google
> OpenGL and figure out what it is. Here's some more bizarre options:
>
> [X] EPUB Epub modules
> [X] EXTENSIONS Extensions
> [X] TEMPLATE Templates
> [X] TOOLS Tools
>
> I mean, if I enable "Extensions", what happens? How do I figure out
> what happens? I have to read the Makefile, at which point having these
> options on a menu is pretty pointless. I mean, I can't even come up
> with a Google search to help me figure out what "tools" are involved
> here.
>
> There are some ports that do this very well. For example:
> [ ] NLS Use internationalized messages
> [ ] PAM Build with PAM support (server only)
> [ ] LDAP Build with LDAP authentication support
> [ ] MIT_KRB5 Build with MIT's kerberos support
> [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5 Builds with Heimdal kerberos support
> [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3)
> [X] XML Build with XML data type (server)
> [X] TZDATA Use internal timezone database (server)
> [ ] DEBUG Builds with debugging symbols
> [ ] ICU Use ICU for unicode collation (server)
> [ ] INTDATE Builds with 64-bit date/time type (server)
>
> I mean, a Google on ICU is liable to bring up all sorts of medical drama
> websites, but I can do a search for "ICU unicode" and find my answer on
> the first result. Not only am I told that optimized compiler flags are
> an option, but I'm told the exact one that will be used (-O3)
>
> The porters handbook doesn't seem to offer any helpful advice on these:
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/makefile-options.html
>
> In fact, the examples it provides are excellent examples of doing it
> WRONG.
>
> Let me see about making a patch to the porters handbook to provide some
> advice ...
While I'm not opposed to being verbose in the short descriptions there
is a limit to the length of the message. If you want more accurate
descriptions I have done the work to make it happen (ports/123185), and
it is now sitting in portmgr territory.
It's a modification to bsd.port.mk but it is the best way to truly solve
the problem since there is a length limitation to the short field.
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/123185
-- WXS
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