understanding macports

[Mojca Miklavec]

On 17 March 2018 at 16:08, Abhishek Kashyap wrote:
> News items as mentioned in GSOC and plists

So:
- https://trac.macports.org/wiki/SummerOfCode#news
- https://trac.macports.org/wiki/SummerOfCode#startupitem
?

The source code is in
    https://github.com/macports/macports-base/
There is one video that has been recorded two years ago with a short
introduction to base hacking:
    https://youtu.be/46qshiDskrM

I hope that someone more competent than me will answer (I'm a total
beginner as far as the core code is concerned).

You should certainly try to install MacPorts first, install a few
ports, check their sources and try to modify them (ideally you should
start from git checkout of macports-ports).

News items:

You can check src/port/port.tcl for
    proc action_notes
    portclient::notifications
etc.

You can try to run:
    port notes python27
and you'll see that the command shows you some notes, the same happens
when you install or upgrade that port.

We would need some system to display arbitrary notifications based on
OS version, version of MacPorts, whether a particular port is
installed etc. But the functionality should be similar to what "port
notes" does. You can also have a look at the link with example of
notes from a different package manager.


Property lists:

Quite some things from that list have recently been implemented, so
one needs to review what exactly still needs to be done (I did not
follow).

Grep macports-ports repository for "startupitem". You will find a
bunch of ports which call startupitem, but the syntax only allows
setting up one job. We need to extend the syntax to support multiple
jobs.

You can also grep for startupitem in macports-base. Sadly I'm not able
to help you much further, other developers would need to jump in to
clarify on that.

But please take a look and try to ask more specific questions. It's
nearly impossible to answer you in a competent way if your questions
are not clear enough and way too short.

Mojca