Re: small changer in ports.html

[liam <allenwc@home.com>]

At 1:59 AM +0300 8/24/01, Heikki Korpela wrote this lot:
>On Thu, 23 Aug 2001, liam wrote:
>
>>       not sure about <it></it> rendering in browsers other than IE and
>>  Netscape
>
>Use <i>.

Duh!

>
>>       location of example of env FLAVOR . . . maybe it should be in
>>  "Advanced Ports Usage" section?
>
>No, it should be in the manual. (And is, even if it could be
>more clear.)

are you referring to man bsd.port.mk(5):

show          Invoked with VARNAME=name, show the contents of VARNAME.
               Mostly used from recursive makes, or to know the contents
               of another port's variables without guessing wrong.
?

I think that this is reasonably clear, but I don't feel that is the issue.

>  > +        # make show VARNAME=<it>variable</it>
>
>Why doesn't the manual page suffice?

cause it is nearly impossible to find unless you know before hand 
precisely what you are looking for.

If you don't know about show you probably would never find it unless 
you very carefully read the man page, which one should do, but most 
people don't. We should all read the /ports/README too, it really 
helps as well, but again, ports traffic leads me to believe that this 
too is largely unused.

My idea here is just to let new ports users know that such things 
exist, not to show them complete knowledge. This way, when they look 
at the web page for using a port, and run into trouble, they get a 
nice hint at what to look for in the man pages. Is why I put this in 
the "trouble shooting" section. Really, all it says is RTFM in the 
hope that we can cut down on new user frustration and on useless 
traffic or ports@.

Perhaps the idea is not mature enough yet.

>  > FLAVOR?
>
>There is no such var.
>
>FLAVOR?= means FLAVOR is set to a null string if it isn't set
>before that; see make(1).

In many ports FLAVOR?= is set to the default flavor of a port, no?
for example Mutt Makefile ?

(I'm looking at 2.8 ports tree today as my 2.9 tree got whacked by a bad hdd)
<-->Later . . . 'liam

allenwc@home.com
William C Allen, BLS, EET

"It may be that your sole purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others"
At least I /have/ a purpose!