package vs ports question

[Kevin Kinsey]

Luiz Eduardo Guida Valmont wrote:

>Wow, I stopped following this thread for a few hours and now I can just
>compile a mini-ports howto. ^^ So, first things first: thanks for all who
>replied. All replies were meaningful, so thank you all.
>
>Kevin, what I didn't know was the fact that ports and packages share the
>same database. Knowing that was really helpful and cleared most doubts I
>had.
>
>Donald, I didn't know about "make package-recursive" and I think I won't try
>it, for now. My system is almost  completly installed and the missing
>packages won't take that much to justify creating the packages to ease
>future installations (well, in fact I hope I never need to reinstall FreeBSD
>^^). I may try it, though, just to see how it works.
>
>One last question: is there a way to find what are the standard targets for
>any given port? I know I could install bash-completion, but I don't it is
>"100% reliable" (I think it may miss some targets if Makefiles are included,
>but I may be wrong).
>
>Once again, thank you all.
>  
>

Well, this is where "RTF*M", "UTSL", and so on probably come in.  Not
that RTFMming is a lot of fun, mind you; but I'm not using it to insult
you, either.

First, there's ports(7).  Then, since the ports system uses
make(1), that's one to read, I'd guess.  Make(1) points you
over to read make.conf(5).  Ports(7) says this:


BUGS
     Ports documentation is split over four places --
     /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk, The Porter's Handbook, the ``Packages and
     Ports'' chapter of The FreeBSD Handbook, and this manual page.

So, those would be some places to start, too (most of which come
in the doc distribution, and is on the website and mirrors, of course.

And as for "UTSL" (that's "use the Source, Luke", right?) you could
read about 14,000 ports Makefiles, if you had time.  Hopefully a few
select ones might suffice....

I don't know if anyone's got a totally complete handle on the entire
system.  People like Mr. Kennaway and many other committers come
close, I'm sure ... but I imagine their knowledge came from RTFM,
and experience, just like most everyone else's**.

HTH,

Kevin Kinsey

*Yeah, that's "Read The Friendly Manual".  Those who say otherwise,
well, they're not friendly, I guess  :D

**Not to mention that an author/programmer is generally pretty
familiar with his work ... up to a point (which is where commenting
your code comes in, eh? ;-)

-- 
Never have children, only grandchildren.
		-- Gore Vidal