submitting a new port, sort of

Elwood Downey elwood.downey at gmail.com
Wed Jun 18 22:49:50 UTC 2025 

Hello Jim,

Wow, I am humbled and honored by the massive outpouring of support from the
macports experts.

Please see comments embedded below.



On Wed, Jun 18, 2025 at 2:20 PM Jim DeLaHunt <list+macports-dev at jdlh.com>
wrote:

> Hello, Elwood Downey, and welcome to MacPorts-dev!
> On 2025-06-17 21:20, Elwood Downey wrote:
>
> ...I skimmed your instructions for submitting a new port but 1) I do not
> have and do not want a github account and 2) I am super lazy when it comes
> to systemy things, I only enjoy programming.
>
> So on the outside chance someone else would be willing to do it all for
> me, I hereby humbly submit my amateur radio program HamClock
> <https://clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock> for consideration as a new
> port.
> ...[elided]...
> name                hamclock
> version             4.18
> categories          amateur radio
> platforms           darwin
> license             MIT
> maintainers         Elwood Downey, ecdowney at clearskyinstitute.com
> description         provides useful data for amateur radio operators
> long_description    HamClock is a kiosk-style application that provides
> real time space weather, radio propagation models, operating events and
> other information particularly useful to the radio amateur.
> homepage            https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock
> master_sites
> https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock/ESPHamClock.tgz
>
> What a lovely project! HamClock appears to integrate a lot of useful data
> from many sources. I can imagine it being very valuable to the people for
> whom it is intended. It would be a fine port IMHO.
>


Thank you for the kind words. According to my nightly scrub of server logs,
there are about 10k hamclock instances running each day so evidently there
is some agreement with your sentiment.  Unfortunately, the same logs report
only a dozen or so instances running on macOS. This is ironic because
HamClock development has always been entirely on macOS, with just basic
regression testing performed before each release on a few linux distros,
freebsd, solaris and aix.


I took the liberty of doing a "systemy thing" for you: creating a Macports
> trac ticket #72625[1] requesting that a port be created for Hamclock. This
> doesn't commit me or anyone else to do the work, but it provides a starting
> point for anyone interested. It includes a link to this thread[2] in the
> macports-dev archives.
>

Yes, I received that and replied much as I will here to your same question.


>From my limited experience writing ports, I can imagine five or so hurdles.
>
> One, as Ryan said, HamClock's self-update function conflicts with a
> macports principle that ports don't modify themselves, only macports
> modifies ports.
>

This policy comes as a surprise. I have been issuing new releases of
HamClock at least monthly, or even daily when a significant bug
needs attention, for the past ten years. It sounds like it will be quite a
chore to keep the macport up to date. I'm certainly willing to accommodate
but we'll have to hash out a mechanism.




> Two, and related, there appears to be only URLs for the current version of
> the source code, while macports works better with repositories which offer
> URLs for each software version. So for HamClock that might be:
>
>  https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock/4.18/ESPHamClock.tgz
>
>
Older versions going back about a year are already online, the following
example shows the pattern:

https://clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock/ESPHamClock-V4.19.tgz

If we pick one for macports I will update my scripts to ensure it remains
online forever.



Normally, macports deal with target project version changes by having
> someone update the portfile and submit it to Macports. Each version of a
> portfile describes a specific version of the target project, and gives a
> specific URL for that verion of the target project's source code. When the
> target project releases a new version, someone notices and updates the
> portfile to specify the new version and the new download URL. They submit
> the new portfile to Macports. Eventually Macports users update their
> Portfile collection from Macports. Then the user's copy of Macports becomes
> aware of the new port version, and offers to perform the update.
>
> Three, as Dave Allured points out, the portfile author needs to figure out
> what other libs HamClock depends on, and which ports supply those libs.
> These dependencies get recorded in the portfile.
>

The only extra library HamClock uses is -lX11, nothing else. The only
include files other than from POSIX are Xlib.h and Xutil.h. I admit I've
never used the macports xorg so I don't know what it takes to use that one.
I have always used Xquartz which puts these in /opt/X11.

However, the top level Makefile does recurse into a few subdirectories to
build libraries that are eventually used for linking. I guess your system
can accommodate that in some manner.




> Four, the HamClock top-level Makefile hard-codes some install paths and
> library paths. The portfile will need to patch these. That is a normal
> thing to do, and functions exist to do it, but it will be an extra task for
> the portfile author.
>
> Five, HamClock can display graphics at various horizontal and vertical
> pixel sizes, and as a local display (via X11) or as a web service. The
> portfile can offer "variants" as a way to let the user choose these options
> at build time. The portfile author might choose to offer these variants,
> and tie them back to the Makefile targets. That is a further task.
>

This is currently handled with different *make* targets by just changing a
few compiler -D flags. In fact, the default Makefile target just lists
these, it does not build anything. Again, something to keep in mind in the
macport version.



> Also, at the risk of distracting you with "systemy" things, might I
> suggest a few clarifications to the HamClock website[3]?
>
>    - The download tab did not make it clear to me that it offered source
>    code. I interpreted it as offering precompiled binaries. Consider adding a
>    subheading "Source code" before the first line of the tab, and changing the
>    following line "revision history" to be a subheading.
>
>
You just missed it, the first line of the Download tab clearly states,
quote "*Download current stable HamClock release source code as zip or tgz.*
".



>
>    - If you decide to have separate URLs to the various versions of the
>    source code, then maybe you will want somewhere a list of versions, each
>    with the download link for that version's source code.
>
>
I do not publish URLs to prior versions intentionally. I don't want people
to silently regress to avoid bugs, I want to know about them immediately so
they are fixed.




>    - The website doesn't make it clear that the project's code is freely
>    licensed. Yes, the source code archive has a LICENSE file containing the
>    MIT licence text, but that isn't visible before downloading. Consider
>    having a tab "License", or a link from a relevant place like the source
>    code link in the Download tab, pointing to the software license.
>
>
You are quite correct so I have added FAQ 63 to answer this question.



>
>    -
>    - Do you seek contributions of bug fixes and patches with
>    improvements?  If so, I would expect to see a tab reading "How to
>    contribute" or the like. I don't see that.
>
>
No, I do not actively seek code submissions. All but a very few that I have
received unsolicited did not meet my standards.

But what I do encourage is submission of bug reports and feature ideas,
these are sprinkled liberally throughout the FAQ answers.



>
>
> Overall, HamClock looks like a lovely project. Thank you for proposing it
> to macports. I hope someone takes the offer and finishes the portfile.
>

Looking forward to it.


>
> Best regards,
>     —Jim "VE7YJD" DeLaHunt
>
>
>
73


> [1] hamclock: make a port for Hamclock project
> <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/72625>
> <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/72625>
> [2] thread "submitting a new port, sort of"
> <https://lists.macports.org/pipermail/macports-dev/2025-June/046320.html>
> <https://lists.macports.org/pipermail/macports-dev/2025-June/046320.html>
> [3] <https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock/>
> <https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock/>
>
>
> --
> .   --Jim DeLaHunt, jdlh at jdlh.com     http://blog.jdlh.com/ (http://jdlh.com/)
>       multilingual websites consultant, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
>
>
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