In response to Warren Block <wbl...@wonkity.com>: > On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Bill Moran wrote: > > > How about: > > > > Options for port-fu > > [ ] BRG Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing > > [X] QFZ Quantum Freeze Zulu rending > > > > At least that one gives me _some_ idea what those TLAs mean. > > There was talk some time ago of having extended descriptions. Several > ideas, but the one that made the most sense to me would be a box at the > bottom that would display a description as you moved through the > options: > > [.] BRG > [X] QFZ > > Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing > > with the . representing the cursor/highlight position. Move down and > the bottom line would change to say "Quantum Freeze Zulu rending". The > nice thing about the box at the bottom is it would give a full line or > possibly several lines for explanations. > > Seems like it could be added without breaking the existing system with > an optional OPTIONS_DESC variable that would correspond with OPTIONS. > I don't really know how hard that would be; ideas are cheap, > implementation more costly.
I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports infrastructure. I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking the time to describe their options. A quick test of some ports turns up this one: [ ] OPENGL OpenGL support True but useless. How about: [ ] OPENGL Use OpenGL graphics library ...which, at least give the user _some_ idea what they're doing. OpenGL probably isn't a good example, however. It's pretty easy to Google OpenGL and figure out what it is. Here's some more bizarre options: [X] EPUB Epub modules [X] EXTENSIONS Extensions [X] TEMPLATE Templates [X] TOOLS Tools I mean, if I enable "Extensions", what happens? How do I figure out what happens? I have to read the Makefile, at which point having these options on a menu is pretty pointless. I mean, I can't even come up with a Google search to help me figure out what "tools" are involved here. There are some ports that do this very well. For example: [ ] NLS Use internationalized messages [ ] PAM Build with PAM support (server only) [ ] LDAP Build with LDAP authentication support [ ] MIT_KRB5 Build with MIT's kerberos support [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5 Builds with Heimdal kerberos support [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3) [X] XML Build with XML data type (server) [X] TZDATA Use internal timezone database (server) [ ] DEBUG Builds with debugging symbols [ ] ICU Use ICU for unicode collation (server) [ ] INTDATE Builds with 64-bit date/time type (server) I mean, a Google on ICU is liable to bring up all sorts of medical drama websites, but I can do a search for "ICU unicode" and find my answer on the first result. Not only am I told that optimized compiler flags are an option, but I'm told the exact one that will be used (-O3) The porters handbook doesn't seem to offer any helpful advice on these: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/makefile-options.html In fact, the examples it provides are excellent examples of doing it WRONG. Let me see about making a patch to the porters handbook to provide some advice ... -- Bill Moran http://www.potentialtech.com http://people.collaborativefusion.com/~wmoran/ _______________________________________________ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
