a no-homepage homepage for ports with dead homepages

[Jan Stary]

On Jan 11 11:49:40, ken.cunningham.webuse at gmail.com wrote:
> 
> On 2018-01-11, at 9:37 AM, Ken Cunningham wrote:
> 
> 
> > 
> > But if I can find a saved one at archive.org, that would be better, to be sure.
> > 
> > K
> 
> I've been prospecting MacPorts errors reported by repology <https://repology.org/maintainer/nomaintainer%40macports.org/problems>. A common error is that the homepage 404s out.
> 
> Many of these ports still work install correctly, but have no homepage, no homepage can seem to be found, and there is none on archive.org.
> 
> Rather than just have it error out forever, I made this page in the spirit of the gentoo page:
> 
> <https://trac.macports.org/wiki/NoHomePage>
> 
> 
> If that is acceptable, I'd like to use it, or some variation of it, for ports like biggersql, for example, to fix some of these errors.

What errors exactly will be "fixed" by that?

> PS : Personally, I think asking users for a new homepage, if there is one, is better than just deleting the homepage variable requirement in Portfiles.

It might be useful to display a message when a port without a manpage is
installed, saying something like you put on the page above, but shorter:

	$port does not have a manpage.
	Please let $maintainer know if you know where it is.

(But note that all the ports listed on that repology page have no maintainer.
And honestly, how many times has it happened in the past that a user came up
with "hey, this homepage you thought was dead is actually here now"?)

At any rate, this would imho be better displayed automaticaly with 
"port notes" - not explicitly in Portfile of course, but implicitly
for ports without a manpage. Meaning they don't have one in the Portfile,
as opposed to "it has this 'homepage', but it's not really its homepage".


	Jan