On 04.06.12 22:32, Dave Hayes wrote:
Chris Nehren<apeiron+freebsd-sta...@isuckatdomains.net> writes:
The descriptions of the options assume the admin is familiar with the
software they're installing. I do not think it is the FreeBSD Project's
purview to document every option for every port. At the very least it'd
take quite a lot of time and effort to document all of that.
That's a fair position. Perhaps it would not be too much trouble to add
this one idea to optionsng: a "more info" field on each option knob
which may be filled in by a port maintainer.
The pkg-descr file in the port already contains link to the software's
origin. The various options the software has are or should be described
there. We definitely don't want the ports cluttered with extraneous and
sometimes out of date (and thus misleading) information.
Beyond this, such explanations would duplicate each port's own
documentation.
Not necessarily. I don't have an example offhand, but I suspect there
are a number of FreeBSD specific option knobs applied to ports.
There are in a way, and all of them are pretty much generic. Like
WITHOUT_X11, WITH_CUPS etc. The purpose of these options is to more or
less define the environment in which the port is intended to be used.
For example, on a head-less server you most definitely want to build
(say) php5 with WITHOUT_X11 in order to not pull unnecessary X11 related
pieces. The intent of such options is to go to make.conf.
These options are for convenience however. You can set each port's
options individually. In all case, compiling from source is not for
those having no clue what they do. The ports infrastructure in FreeBSD
is already doing the hard work to port the software to your OS, you need
to make informed decisions on options yourself.
If this is beyond you (and not you personally), then by all means use
pre-packaged software in binary form.
Since it is very likely that you interpret this as yet another elitist
comment, let's make it clear: anyone is welcome to ask for help with
FreeBSD and ports (in the proper mailing list as to not create much
noise and get negative response). Nobody is obliged to provide any help
on anything. Nevertheless, the FreeBSD users are great community and you
are often getting help even for the most stupid questions. Except when
you start with name calling, or insist "if you don't help me, I will go
elsewhere" or "apparently, you don't want the number of FreeBSD users to
grow". Then you waste everyone's time -- that could be spent on
answering other people's "stupid" questions.
Daniel
Daniel
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