Speed up trace mode (GSoC Project)

[Christopher Chavez]

Hi Mihir, I am a MacPorts user and port maintainer. I have a suggestion, but am not a member, so do not take my advice as canon.


> On Mar 23, 2019, at 1:52 PM, Mihir Luthra <1999mihir.luthra at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I was thinking to add an 8th section which gives a small high level tour of the codebase to a newcomer joining the community.
> I personally would only be able to give tour of trace mode, but that section can be populated with other topics as well later.
> 

Improvement of any documentation should be welcome.

However, my impression is that the guide document is limited in scope to what is useful to either a MacPorts end user or a port maintainer, plus some logistics of participating in the MacPorts community. I do not know if this limitation in scope is intentional, nor if topics such as base development would be welcome in the guide.

I think that the Wiki on MacPorts’ Trac server https://trac.macports.org/wiki could better place for covering those topics, since to my knowledge the Wiki is open to any topics relating to MacPorts. Some advantages of the Wiki are that it is more “live” in the sense of being able to edit it and see changes immediately, rather than having to rebuild the entire guide (I do not know if this is done automatically). I would think that the Wiki would be a better place at least temporarily for working on topics that would be rapidly changing, and are independent of topics in the existing guide. Some downsides are that the Wiki is not usable offline, and that it uses a syntax rather different from docbook/adoc. The Wiki is also open to editing by anyone.

Although the main website and guide mention the Trac Wiki, maybe they should better advertise that’s where advanced topics not covered in the guide might reside. Any articles added on this topic should be indexed on a main page somewhere like https://trac.macports.org/wiki#MacPortsDevelopment so that they are not orphaned.

There could still be a better alternative to both the Wiki and the guide which I haven’t thought of.


Thank you for your interest in participating in GSoC with MacPorts, Mihir. I hope this helps!

Christopher A. Chavez