From owner-freebsd-ports Sun Aug 25 18:34:11 1996 Return-Path: owner-ports Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id SAA05903 for ports-outgoing; Sun, 25 Aug 1996 18:34:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from po1.glue.umd.edu (po1.glue.umd.edu [129.2.128.44]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA05895; Sun, 25 Aug 1996 18:34:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from carrier.eng.umd.edu (carrier.eng.umd.edu [129.2.98.188]) by po1.glue.umd.edu (8.8.Alpha.8/8.8.Alpha.8) with ESMTP id VAA20894; Sun, 25 Aug 1996 21:34:06 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (chuckr@localhost) by carrier.eng.umd.edu (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id VAA03052; Sun, 25 Aug 1996 21:34:05 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: carrier.eng.umd.edu: chuckr owned process doing -bs Date: Sun, 25 Aug 1996 21:34:05 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey X-Sender: chuckr@carrier.eng.umd.edu To: Tim Vanderhoek cc: "Julian H. Stacey" , "Jordan K. Hubbard" , ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How to people feel about adding an AUTHOR convention to ports? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-ports@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sun, 25 Aug 1996, Tim Vanderhoek wrote: > [I switched the order of my quoting to get the main point up at the top] > > On Sun, 25 Aug 1996, Chuck Robey wrote: > > On Sun, 25 Aug 1996, Julian H. Stacey wrote: > > > > If you put a lot of gratuitous stuff in your Makefile, it's just going to > > discourage folks from trying to figure out how to make more ports. > > Bah humbug. If they're making a port, they're not likely some kind of > technophobe who will cringe at the site of a few details. Remember, > making a port potentially involves close examination of the ported source > files, likely an examination of of the included Makefile, and who-knows > what-else. It's not like you're dealing with babies who are new to > computing. OK. Add a lot of variables that can't be tested in any way, with no code behind them, and with meanings so overlapping that there isn't even any way to make intelligent guesses. All techs think alike, don't worry, it'll work. Did you happen to notice that there is no functionality behind any of these? At that level, with nebulous meanings, comments work much better. > > > > > LIST_FREEBSD = hylafax@freebsd.org > > > MAINTAINER = jhs@freebsd.org > > > LIST_GENERIC = flexfax@sgi.com > > > AUTHOR_CURRENT = sam@sgi.com > > > AUTHOR_ORIGINAL = sam@sgi.com > > > > Julian, if it's not being used in bsd.port.mk, what possible use are the > > variables? Stuff like this might be more useful as a comment, or maybe in > > the DESCR file. I can't think of a single port that would need more info > > than the author of the original sources, and the FreeBSD maintainer[s]. > > One thing that could conceviebly be useful is somewhere to report bugs. > This would probably be the maintainer. A special target, 'pr' could be > used to send a bug, or something like `pkg_bug'. Of course, this would > just make it all the more complicated for a newuser (as opposed to a > single "send-pr" program). Actually, the more I think about it the less > I like it. > > > -- > Outnumbered? Maybe. Outspoken? Never! > tIM...HOEk > > ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@eng.umd.edu | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 9120 Edmonston Ct #302 | Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run Journey2 and n3lxx, both FreeBSD (301) 220-2114 | version 2.2 current -- and great FUN! ----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------