make options

[Matthew Seaman]

HM 2K wrote:
> When making some ports, they display an "options" interface.
> 
> Is there a way to specify these options so that the interface does not
> appear?

You only get the options dialogue one time -- once you've answered the 
questions it asks, it writes the answers into per-port subdirectories
of /var/db/ports/.  So long as the set of options remains constant, you
won't be presented with an options dialogue again for that port, although
you can just run 'make config' at any time to change your choices.

Now, if you want to automate building of ports and not suffer the frustration
of your build machine sitting there uselessly all night waiting for you to
tick some box, there are two choices.

  * Define BATCH in the make environment or as a variable in /etc/make.conf.
    This will cause all OPTIONS dialogues to be suppressed and the port will be
    built with the defaults where no previous settings exist.

  * Run 'make config-recursive' for every important port you want to build.
    You will have to re-run the command repeatedly until you no longer get
    prompted with any OPTIONS dialogues -- turning an option on or off 
    will generally result in modifying the ports dependencies, and newly
    introduced dependencies may well have their own OPTIONS dialogues.

Of course, you can supply the same information that is generated by the
OPTIONS dialogues by alternate means.  The output of the dialogues are just
small Makefiles, which you could copy from another system, or write by 
hand.  In principle you could incorporate the same variable settings in say,
/etc/make.conf but I've never tried that and cannot confirm that it works
as expected.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                   7 Priory Courtyard
                                                  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey     Ramsgate
                                                  Kent, CT11 9PW

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