Beginner questions

[Stefan Bruda]

Hi,

I just came into the world of MacPorts.  I actualy come from Gentoo
Linux so for the most part the whole MacPorts process seemed
wonderfully familiar to me.  I stumbled upon some annoyances though,
and I could not find any answers so I am hereby asking the following:

o  Are there references and guidelines for constructing new ports?  I
   have gotten most of the things by looking at existing ports, but it
   would be nice to have some reference manual to get back to now and
   then.  There are still things I don't know and the trial and error
   process I am currently using sucks.

o  Does MacPorts logs anything?  If so, where?  I miss genlop (the
   Gentoo log parser) and I am wondering if there is any support for
   an equivalent tool.

o  Is there any reason not to build readline-enabled applications
   (short of hacking ports by hand)?  It is rather painful to work for
   instance with a readline-less Python.  Wouldn't a suitable variant
   be appropriate?

o  As a relatively minor question (which I guess shows my Gentoo/ricer
   background), is there any way of defining defaults for C[XX]FLAGS
   or make options (such as -j, I have a powerful machine that could
   use a high -j)?

If my questions already have answers somewhere, I apologize and I ask
that you please direct me to the right place.

I am running what believe to be the latest stable version (DarwinPorts
1.32), would any of the answers change if I move to a 1.4 version (and
if so how do I build it, will just a ./configure && make && make
install replace the old version correctly?).

Thanks in advance,
Stefan

-- 
If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as
it isn't, it ain't.  That's logic.
    --Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass