dialogwrapper in ports

[Thomas Mueller]

On 9/4/2012 12:41 PM, Warren Block wrote:
> dialogwrapper has now been committed to Tools/scripts in /usr/ports.
> Further testing is requested.


> What is dialogwrapper?

> dialogwrapper is a wrapper script for dialog(1) that works around some
> bugs and takes advantage of new features to make ports options setting
> easier and better.

> On FreeBSD 9 and later, two major features are available:

> 1. Extended descriptions.  If a description won't fit in the space
>    available, a "+" is shown at the far right and the remainder is shown
>    at the bottom of the screen.  The easiest way to test this is to pick
>    a port, edit one of the option descriptions to be very long, then run
>    'make config'.  Hopefully this will eventually allow port maintainers
>    to use longer and more meaningful descriptions.

> 2. Variable menu size.  Options screens in windows larger than 80x24
>    show wider descriptions and more lines.  Convenient example: with a
>    tall window, do 'make config' in print/ghostscript9.

> On FreeBSD 8, dialog(1) does not have a needed feature, so extended
> descriptions are merely chopped off.  This also helps to avoid a bug in
> the older version's display of descriptions that are too long.


> How do I use dialogwrapper?

> Update your copy of the ports tree, then add this line to /etc/make.conf :

>   DIALOG="/usr/ports/Tools/scripts/dialogwrapper.sh"

> Configure port options as usual.  It should look and work the same as
> usual, but handle long descriptions and bigger windows as described above.

Brian Drewery responded:

> I've set this in my make.conf and tried it out. It's really cool.

> Would be nice to see this get more testing and possibly be set as default.

> Bryan

This whets my virtual appetite, I'd like to try.

But does this avoid the problem of getting messed up with the dialog when generating a log file with script or

make install clean | & tee build.log  ?

I noticed on http://www.freshports.org/commits.php just a day ago,
devel/cdialog and x11/xdialog.

Maybe xdialog avoids this messing up when generating a log file, but can only be used after xorg is built and installed.


Tom