Proposal for Authors / Vendors in ports

[Melvyn Sopacua]

On Fri, 15 Nov 2013, Stefan Esser wrote:

> Am 15.11.2013 08:23, schrieb Matthew Seaman:
>> On 15/11/2013 00:54, Eitan Adler wrote:
>>> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 5:41 PM, Jaap Akkerhuis
>>> <jaapna at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Nov 14, 2013, at 8:30, Erwin Lansing <erwin at freebsd.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> That sounds like an excellent idea.  I'm just a bit worried
>>>>> about spreading the information over too many places, and
>>>>> would rather split content from logic and add these to
>>>>> pkg-descr as well next to the current WWW.  I know we're not
>>>>> consistent already with things like COMMENT and LICENSE
>>>>> already in the Makefile, so won't ojbect too much to where
>>>>> these end up.
>>>>
>>>> Apart from spreading this information into to many places
>>>> (pkg_desc seams a proper place to have such information), why
>>>> have the Makefile double up as a database?
>>>
>>> pkg_descr is free form.  Makefiles are parsable (make -V).
>>
>> pkg_descr is only as free-form as we define it to be.  It's a lot
>> quicker to parse out the WWW entry from pkg_descr than it is to
>> run 'make -V' to extract values from port Makefiles.  That's
>> because make includes and parses a whole stack of different files
>> from /usr/ports/Mk and elsewhere and does a bunch of other
>> processing -- takes about 200ms per port just to print out the
>> variables used in the INDEX.

+1.

I also fail to see the upside of adding extra variables to the
makefiles. Requestor of this feature already hinted it's going to be
queried using the pkg command, so all it needs is a pkg command that can
parse a single line into 2 meaningful chunks, using well-defined
delimiters.
In addition, there's no descision being made based upon these variables
in the building/installation process.

>> So, unless the variable is needed as part of the build process for
>> a port putting it in pkg_decr makes sense to me.  This could
>> include some well-known values like MAINTAINER if we want to go
>> that far.
>
> Two comments:
>
> 1) I think that pkg-descr contains information about the ported
>   software, not the port. I.e. the web-site, the organisation, or
>   the license are good candidates for pkg-descr. The maintainer
>   or other information that does not relate to the ported software
>   itself but just to how it is managed in the FreeBSD ports tree
>   should be kept in some other place. (IMHO)

License is used in port building logic.  Adding more metadata to
pkg-descr fills up the 4k holes mentioned earlier in the thread and adds
possibilities for sites like freshports to add more content with minimal
effort. Since metadata and description are words with similar meaning, I
don't see a need for a name change or new file, as proposed earlier.

>
> 2) If meta-information is moved to pkg-descr, it might be worthwhile
>   to add some knowledge about formats and restrictions to portlint.

+1

--
Melvyn Sopacua