request for port create command, to build a portfile from a URL

[Joshua Root]

On 2018-3-7 01:58 , Ken Cunningham wrote:
> It would be nice to have a command like
> 
> port create URL
> 
> that would download the URL, calc the checksums for it, and build a basic Portfile for it.
> 
> It could ask for a category to use for the Port.
> 
> In a more advance version, it could extract the URL and do some quick analysis on it.
> 
> if there's a CMakeLists.txt file in the root, do the right things to make it a cmake based port.
> 
> If there's a configure file in the root, do the right things for that.
> 
> Might make things faster and easier for people to get started and up and running.
> 
> Certainly would make it easier for people who want to use MacPorts infrastructure to build their own files, as many don't know how to properly set up the include and lib directories, etc.

There's a fairly basic tool called portfile-gen in contrib. Improvements
are certainly welcome.

I'd advise not just blindly setting whatever checksums the downloaded
file happens to have though; the maintainer should be getting those from
a secure source (e.g. https web site) and verifying that they match, or
verifying the distfile against a gpg signature. If that can be automated
somehow then great, but let's not encourage skipping it.

- Josh