Ports' tips and gotchas

[Adam Weinberger]

> On 3 Jan, 2017, at 9:16, Vlad K. <vlad-fbsd at acheronmedia.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> I've submitted a patch for Postgres server ports with a note about enabling checksumming (https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=214671). I'm now preparing to submit a patch with a similar "Nice to know" tip for Roundcube (changing default_host breaks the user profiles, and how to fix it).
> 
> Is pkg-message the right place for such tips and gotchas? Do we need a separate mechanism where users could collate and submit tips they find important when installing/upgrading/configuring the port (yeah, those three exact use cases, I'm sure pkg-message is not the best place for regular usage tips). Aside from UPDATING of course, which is just supposed to be important notes about one-time updates/upgrades.

No, pkg-message is not the right place. pkg-message should be for "Where do I start?" or for FreeBSD-specific instructions. Tips, gotchas, interesting discoveries, bugs, foibles, shortcuts, etc. shouldn't go into the pkg-message. They should be on a blog, on a website, on a wiki, submitted upstream for inclusion in manpages or README files, etc.

pkg-message needs to contain only essential information, otherwise end-users will start to ignore them. I agree that tips should be shared, but putting it into SVN isn't the way to go.

# Adam


-- 
Adam Weinberger
adamw at adamw.org
https://www.adamw.org