autodetecting dependencies

[A.J. Kehoe IV (Nanoman)]

A.J. Kehoe IV (Nanoman) wrote:

[...]

>In my opinion, it's best to use the OPTIONS framework and to avoid automatic detection entirely.  Consider this problem:
>
>http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20120304190922.GA58789

[...]

It turns out that other people feel the same way about automatic dependencies, and there's nothing in FreeBSD that counters their negative impact on indexing and port/package management.  This subject is now covered by the FreeBSD Porter's Handbook under "Problems Caused by Automatic Dependencies":

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/makefile-depend.html#AEN2421

You can use grep to get a list of ports that probably suffer from this affliction:

grep -l 'exists(\${LOCALBASE}' /usr/ports/*/*/Makefile

If your shell complains about the number of arguments or something, try this in /bin/sh:

find /usr/ports/ -regex '/usr/ports/[^\/]*/[^\/]*/Makefile' -print | awk '{ system("grep -l \"exists(\\${LOCALBASE}\" " $0); }'

My thanks to everybody who gave me feedback regarding this issue, especially the FreeBSD Ports Management Team and Warren Block.

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