GSoC 2013: Binaries Idea

[Joshua Root]

On 2013-4-14 14:37 , Marcelo Galvão Póvoa wrote:
> I think binary packages could benefit from some other useful perks such
> as: prior disk space requirement information and being able to query
> port contents such as in [1].
> 
> [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pkgfile

This would be nice to have of course. Looping through all the archives
on the buildslaves and putting the size and contents into a database
would be pretty simple; the interesting part is making the db accessible
to users. The server-side portion needs to work behind the rather
restrictive MacOSForge firewall. There are UI decisions to be made on
the client side: Do you extend the existing 'contents' and 'provides'
actions to also query the database of uninstalled ports, or add new
actions, or add a separate command?

It would also be nice to make the info accessible on the web, which ties
into the MacPorts Web App (MPWA) that we'd like to replace the rather
limited ports.php. A lot of code already exists (it uses Rails) but is
not deployed.

- Josh