Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 03:32:29 -0700 From: asami@cs.berkeley.edu (Satoshi Asami) To: jkh@time.cdrom.com Cc: ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: `make info'? Message-ID: <199508261032.DAA01272@silvia.HIP.Berkeley.EDU> In-Reply-To: <3688.808924626@time.cdrom.com> (jkh@time.cdrom.com)
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* I think it's finally come to pass that we have too many ports.. :-) There are now 342 ports.... ;) * I think it's time that we considered this, and I have two quick * suggestions just off the top of my head (there may be better ones of * course): * * 1. Build an auto-generated README file at each level of the tree that's * *human readable* as well as the INDEX at the top (which, someday RSN, * I'll write a utility for actually using :-). BTW Jordan, INDEX is now used to auto-generate the "ports home page", i.e., http://www.freebsd.org/Ports. Very useful. Anyway, adding a README to each category is a good idea. I think this can be separated into two parts, the description of the category and that of individual ports. To auto-generate this README, we can create a subdirectory "pkg" that has COMMENT and DESCR (I have no idea what PLIST here can do ;). For instance, the emulators/README will look like this: === This is the README file of ports/emulators. (taken from template) This category contains programs that you can use to run programs for different operating systems and those you can use to read/write data written in their format. (taken from pkg/DESCR) These are the one-line descriptions of each port: (taken from template) cpmemu: Cpm emulator version 0.2 cpmtools: Utility to transfer files from/to CP/M (R) diskettes. hfs: hfs - program for reading Macintosh HFS floppy disks, hard drives a. mtools: Mtools - a collection of tools for manipulating MSDOS files. Vers. pcemu: pcemu - An 8086 PC emulator, written by By David Hedley (hedley@cs.. tkfhs: tkhfs - a Tcl/Tk front end to the hfs program. vmsbackup: VMSBACKUP reads VMS BACKUP tapes. (obviously taken from */pkg/COMMENT -- I truncated long lines) If you want to see a more detailed description of each port, please cd into that directory and type "make info". (taken from template) === And port/README will have a little more "meta" version of this, taking emulators/pkg/COMMENT and such. Obviously, it needs a separate template too. * 2. Add another target called `info' or something suitably mnemonic to * the ports structure so that the user can type `make info' at any level * of the tree to get a human readable dump of what's there. Document * this option, along with other useful ones like `all' and `install' * (we should never assume that the user just knows what to do), in a * top level README and hope that the user is at least reasonable enough * to read that first. I think this is a good idea. Actually, for the top level and one level below it, I think we can just have it "cat README".... :) Speaking of the toplevel, may I delete GUIDELINES? It is obsolete, I have no intentions (nor the time) to update it, people should refer to the handbook anyway.... Satoshi
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