The mtree and man pages

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Aug 14, 2007, at 02:24, Anders F Björklund wrote:

> Stupid, stupid, stupid Reply rules on this list...

The list configuration is not stupid, for the reasons outlined here:

http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

> Forwarded message: (from me)
>
>> Boey Maun Suang wrote:
>>
>>> In addition, it's not much trouble at all to make a port install  
>>> man pages into ${prefix}/share/man; in most cases, we either pass  
>>> --mandir=${prefix}/share/man to configure or copy it ourselves.   
>>> (I suspect that most of the ports that install man pages into $ 
>>> {prefix}/man are using configure script generated by autoconf <  
>>> 2.59c, as it was only at that revision that it changed its  
>>> default mandir to ${prefix}/share/man.)  Consequently, I think we  
>>> should stick with installing man pages into ${prefix}/share/man.
>>
>> Seems very redundant to have that --mandir in each and every  
>> little Portfile. Might as well have the definition next to the  
>> default --prefix=${prefix}, so that it would automatically add -- 
>> mandir=${prefix}/share/man --infodir=${prefix}/share/info ? Since  
>> that is now the mandatory location, might as well make it the  
>> default configure arguments as well...

Adding that to the configure.pre_args would probably break all the  
ports whose configure scripts don't recognize the --mandir argument,  
wouldn't it? I hate MacPorts base changes that break whole swathes of  
ports. I feel that people should feel free to make such changes to  
base, so long as they also modify all affected ports so they do not  
break as a result. If that is too cumbersome, then IMHO the change to  
base should not be made. For example, making mtree violations fatal  
errors broke lots of ports. That should not have been done.

>> Some ports that install into ${prefix}/man either use their own  
>> build system or plain have it hardcoded in their Makefiles. For  
>> example, MacPorts have hardcoded the location of ${prefix}/share/ 
>> man in doc/Makefile, no matter what ${mandir} is ? The main reason  
>> why it didn't used to be such a big fuzz, was because of the $ 
>> {prefix}/man -> share/man symlink.

And why is it now a big deal to track these mtree violations? I still  
have said symlink.