Easy access to external repositories.

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Monday June 01 2015 15:56:32 Thibaut Paumard wrote:

> One usual and easy solution to this problem is to use lexicographic
> order and let the files start with a number: e.g.
>   10_macports.conf
> is the default, most third party repositories should have a name

Which also means that you have to rename all files if you want to change order.

It would be easier to use a separate file in sources.conf.d, say sources.conf.d/order which lists the files in the desired order of priority, possibly with tags like nosync .
Of course then you're back to rewriting a file like with sources.conf itself, but one with a simpler format, and less crucial. For instance, base could reject the file and use only sources.conf if there's some form of corruption.

> I tried to write the Portfile so that when one tries to uninstall it, it
> will undo whatever was done during installation.

So is there 1 Portfile per external repository? Did you handle deactivation or did you simply make it impossible (which would probably be the best thing to do but I don't know if it can be done).

I still think that whatever can be done with a Portfile in this domain can also (and better) be done with a dedicated script, a la add-port-repository.

All this got me wandering to wondering about hacking a version of APT on top of the port command ... no, I don't think I just admitted that :)

> I was just thinking that since this [per-port priorities] hasn't been done before, it is going to
> have a higher risk and likely take longer to "bring to market".

I doubt that. AFAIK MacPorts uses indices ("portindex" files) internally, and I find it difficult to believe that it'd be hard to get this right without long periods of testing.
Anyway I think that those port priorities would be optional, fall back to the default priority if they don't compute, and at least in a 1st implementation only concern from what repository a given port is installed. That's not particularly hard to implement:

if port has priority setting
  set prefdir to port preferred repository
  if prefdir = "default" set prefdir to default repository # redundant but what the heck
  set portdir to port preferred repository if it exists
set portdir to default repository if unset

R.