Easy access to external repositories.

[Clemens Lang]

Hi,

> But sure, what would make it nicer is what I alluded to in a previous email. How
> about having MacPorts do what YUM does and read additional 3rd party repository
> configuration files from a directory. Something like
> ${prefix}/local/etc/macports/sources.conf.d/, and
> ${prefix}/etc/macports/archive_sites.conf.d/ etc. Then I do not have to modify
> ${prefix}/local/etc/macports/sources.conf, but rather just add or remove a
> configuration file from /etc/macports/sources.conf.d/. That would be as clean
> as it gets I think and how other package managements systems deal with this use
> case.

Good point, we should implement this.


> Of course the implementer would have to define what the prioritisation order
> would be for the files under this directory. But I would have the standard
> MacPorts repository always take precedence over 3rd party ones by default.

The file could just contain priority metadata to do this correctly.


> Should the user interface not simply expose the rules that are already encoded
> in the core system? Specifically URLs declared first in the configuration files
> take precedence over URLs declared further down.

Yes -- but an ordered list with operations to re-order it is hard to represent in
a command line interface :(


> Hmm.. well, that would be nice to try solve the generic problem and allow per
> package priority. But I do not know of any other production package management
> system that has implemented such a thing.

Most Linux package managers have priorities associated with repositories. We're
currently planning to use libsolv, which is also used by yum and provides this
feature.


> So I would have to say that this is probably years away from stable production.

I wouldn't say year*s*, but a year is probably a realistic estimate, so this is
not a valid short-term solution, which is why I'm in favor of committing your
Portfile.


> Just look at the MacPorts GUI app, that got started as a GSoC project in 2009
> and is still announced as only a beta product
> (https://trac.macports.org/wiki/MacPortsGUI).

Yes, we've previously had problems getting our GSoC projects integrated. We've
made process adjustments that should improve this situation, though.

-- 
Clemens Lang