php category

[Randall Wood]

On 24 Oct 2007, at 03:30, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> I presume we should remove "php" from the categories of each of  
> these ports? I don't see why we would need a "php" category. The  
> php software itself is a language that's often used for web sites,  
> so "lang" and "www" are good categories. And webapps developed with  
> php belong in "www"; nobody should care what language they were  
> made with.

Removing this category is a bad idea.

The only requirement with regard to categories that I am aware of is  
that a port be in a category in the dports tree so that PortIndex can  
find it. While it makes sense that portlint should issue warnings  
about categories that don't exist (was the category a typo?),  
portlint in this case should not drive behavior (unless, of course,  
the category was a typo like (for example: gnmoe instead of gnome).

There are 72 categories listed on http://apollo.homeunix.net/macports/ 
ports.php as of 24-Oct-2007 19:07:22 but only 42 category directories  
in the port tree[1].

As I have advocated earlier[2], we should begin thinking about  
categories not as physical bins to stick ports into (especially since  
many ports have more than one category listed for the port and there  
are 30 categories that do not really exist), but as tags in a  
taxonomy of ports (admittedly a very flat one, but a taxonomy  
nonetheless) that may or may not assist users in finding that  
particular port that solves their particular problem.

If portlint really needs to be shut up about this, perhaps doing  
something like having portlint check against a list of "virtual"  
categories in a file would work...

[1] https://svn.macosforge.org/projects/macports/browser/trunk/dports
[2] http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-dev/2007-August/ 
002560.html

Randall Wood
rhwood at mac.com
http://shyramblings.blogspot.com

"The rules are simple: The ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes.  
All the
rest is just philosophy."