State of the Porters' Handbook

[Baptiste Daroussin]

On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 11:40:50AM +0100, Dominic Fandrey wrote:
> On 28/10/2013 11:26, John Marino wrote:
> > On 10/28/2013 11:16, Dominic Fandrey wrote:
> >> On 28/10/2013 11:03, John Marino wrote:
> >>> If there are files in those directories, they'll be on the plist and
> >>> stage handles them.  I'd have to look up how to create empty directories
> >>> properly.
> >>
> >> Stage replaceses strings in installed files?
> > 
> > No, the port does that kind of thing in the stage directory.  After
> > everything is installed there in the stage directory, they are packaged
> > or installed into the $PREFIX
> > 
> >> I can see the benefits for less error prone package building. But right now
> >> it's just additional work coming my way.
> > 
> > You really need to get a better grasp of the concept.  There are several
> > emails from bapt that may help.  For new ports it's not "additional"
> > work and for existing ports, yes there is a conversion but the benefits
> > are worth it.
> > 
> >>> 2. Stage is not going away.  There is not another option.
> >>> 3. You've been given a source of documentation.  It's not in the
> >>> handbook, but it does exist in some form.  What more do you need to
> >>> progress?
> >>
> >> There is a procedure. Stuff belongs into the handbook. Stick to it.
> > 
> > Fine, but it's a huge topic that somebody has to write and validate.
> > You're willing to criticize (justified) but unwilling to help rectify
> > the problem.
> 
> Well, bsd.stage.mk isn't well commented either. I think right now only
> the person who implemented it could write reasonable documentation.
> 
> >  If you only want to complain, I think you've made your
> > point (a point that everyone is already aware of).
> > 
> > FYI, I have no dog in the hunt other than I believe stage is a welcome
> > update to ports.
> 
> 1. Implementation
> 2. Testing
> 3. Documentation
> 4. Mandatory
> 
> We're in stage 2 and it's already mandatory. I'm not against staging,
> I'm against making things prematurely mandatory.

With that kind of reasoning we get the ports tree we have now. Meaning a pile of
inconsistent, inefficient things, and things like UNIQUENAME not being UNIQUE
etc.

the stage work is a 3 years work almost, that has been half abandonned, a lot of
time.

Documentation on how to convert has been done on the wiki before making staging
mandatory and completed since.

Documentation for the handbook is another beast because the whole handbook as to
be touched and reviewed, and I ask a couple of time to people to help me
documenting on the handbook.

I don't buy the opinion that the handbook is totally outdated, all the features
I added but stage are in the handbook including shebang fix ! so perhaps that
can be improved but that is there.

Before committing the stage support I made sure that all previous things has
been documented.

and sorry but my priority is to have the ports tree back into a sane state where
we have consistency and sane packages, do documentation has much as I can and I
try to avoid having too much latency for documentation.

Bapt
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