port name unification for libraries

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 21, 2007, at 04:26, Jochen Küpper wrote:

> I want to propose to unify port names on a somewhat more systematic  
> basis. This is triggered by finding these four graphics library names:
>   libpng
>   libmng
>   jpeg
>   tiff
>
> I think there should really be libtiff and libjpeg ports!

Maybe. But why do we care?

We don't currently have any good way to rename ports. If we rename  
the ports, people who have the ports installed under their old names  
will never learn about updates. Or, they'll get the new port  
installed as a dependency, and the old one will stay installed until  
they notice and manually remove it. Not ideal. I proposed a syntax  
for portfiles whereby you could leave a stub tiff and jpeg port and  
just indicate that they have been superseded by ports libtiff and  
libjpeg but nobody responded to that thread, so we don't have any  
feature like that at this time.

> I understand that jpeg and tiff install more than libraries, but  
> nevertheless for most dependencies the libraries are the crucial  
> parts and it should be possible to state that in the same way as is  
> one for libpng.
>
> Maybe it would be useful to separate the ports into a library-port  
> and an application port, i.e., libjpeg and jpeg-bin or jpeg-apps?

Why is it useful to separate these? We just run the makefile the  
software provides. It's a bit of work to separate this into two  
ports, for what benefit?

> Please forward this to macports-devel if appropriate.
>
> Generally it would be nice to have a section on "naming portfiles"  
> in the new guide.

What guidelines would you propose?