Beginner questions

[Daniel J. Luke]

On Mar 17, 2007, at 5:20 PM, Stefan Bruda wrote:
> o  Are there references and guidelines for constructing new ports?

I think the most complete documentation right now is the man page  
(man portfile). There was some other documentation in the past, but I  
don't think it exists anymore (and it wasn't very complete, butI  
could be wrong).

> o  Does MacPorts logs anything?

nope (at least not currently).

> 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?

I think this is on the FAQ, but you'll want to install the py- 
readline port and then you'll have readline support for macports'  
python.

As for other ports, it's really up to the maintainer which options  
are available by default and/or which are available as variants.

> 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)?

Nope (although you could probably hack it in if you wanted). The  
problem being that some ports won't compile correctly with certain -j  
or CFLAG options.

> 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

nope.

> (and
> if so how do I build it, will just a ./configure && make && make
> install replace the old version correctly?).

That would be how to do it.

Of course, once we release 1.4 (really soon now), you can just do  
'port selfupdate' to get it to install.
--
Daniel J. Luke
+========================================================+
| *---------------- dluke at geeklair.net ----------------* |
| *-------------- http://www.geeklair.net -------------* |
+========================================================+
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