Beginner questions

[Stefan Bruda]

Hi,

At 18:39 -0400 on 2007-3-17 Daniel J. Luke wrote:
 >
 > 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, but I
 > could be wrong).

Of course, who would have thought, a manual page...

 > > o  Does MacPorts logs anything?
 > 
 > nope (at least not currently).

It is a pitty in my opinion, as is also the lack of a "pretend" flag
(always nice for me to know in advance what is gonna happen).  These
two are the main features I would personally like to have in the
system.  Anyway, maybe I will become familiar enough with MacPorts to
be able to contribute to the code, till then I will keep my mouth
shut.

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

Fair enough.

 > > 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 not that keen on it, though a logical solution would be to
provide for a global value of these flags and then a way to override
the values on a per-port basis.

 > > 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.

I will then wait for the official 1.4.

Thank you very much for all the answers.

Cheers,
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