MacPorts Web App (mpwa) online for initial testing.

[James Berry]

The MacPorts Web App (mpwa) is online for some initial testing at  
http://db.macports.org/

This is the start of a vision for a more comprehensive online  
repository for ports. Please see some of my sketchy documentation at:

	http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/users/jberry/mpwa/doc/ 
design.txt
	and http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/users/jberry/mpwa/ 
doc/portpkg-design.txt

To quote from the design document, my goals for mpwa are:

Goals:

	- Develop a network-reachable port storage mechanism

	- Allow for ad-hoc submission of new ports/revisions by any user
	
	- Since users may submit ports and make them available, port  
availability
	  is not held up for review by committers. Committers may provide  
special status
	  to approved ports.

	- All submissions and versions should always remain network reachable
	  so that old versions may be installed and/or reviewed.

	- Allow for storage of meta information with such a submission:
		- Submitter
		- Comments by various users
		- Build status
		- (potentially binaries)
		- etc.

	- Allow for promotion of such a submission to a special status  
(stable, whatever)
	  by the port maintainer or other official personnel.

Note that what is visible today is not a complete implementation. The  
following things are implemented, for the most part:

	- port submit, to submit a port to the repository.
	- autosubmit, a script I've been running which auto submits svn  
checkins after they've been given a chance to stabilize.
	- mpwa web frontend to browse and view ports and port information.

The following is not yet implemented:

	- A handler for the application/vnd.macports.portpkg mime-type to  
make it easy to download and use a given portpkg.
	- Any sort of local support for ports by http: url.
	- port get, to get a particular port and use it locally
	- Any remote indexing or query support
	- User accounts
	- User created tags
	- Signing of submissions by submitters
	- Support for dependencies
	- Nicer css design and information layout.

Your feedback or help on the project is desired. In particular, if  
somebody want so put in a little work on the css and templates, that  
would be great.

James