digikam & amarok ports?

[Niels Ganser]

Rainer Müller wrote:
> For questions like this, "Do we plan to provide $foo with MacPorts?", 
> there is only one answer: If you provide a Portfile and maintain it, we 
> can include it. May sound a bit harsh, but that's the way it is. A 
> ticket asking for inclusion can stay there for a few years...

Rainer, I appreciate this. It doesn't sound harsh at all an I did not 
actually expect anybody to jump up and down in excitement over the 
opportunity to create a newly requested port.

However I haven't followed the macports development so far and thought 
that these packages might already be in the works or there might 
actually be a port providing those programs out there. This is because I 
couldn't find a way to search for a port which provides a file 
identified only by a given name. Is this impossible due to the 
architecture of the system or is there a global index of all provided 
files? (à la "apt-file search" if anybody is familiar with this..)

Rainer Müller wrote:
> You can find documentation on how to write a Portfile in our Guide at 
> http://guide.macports.org/#development.introduction
> 
> First task would be to find out if we have all the dependencies digikam 
> and amarok need. Next thing would be if they both compile in general. If 
> not, it would need patching which can be in the range from easy to very 
> hard. But the mailing lists and IRC can be a great help on getting a 
> working port.

Thanks for the pointers. I'll definitely look into it. I wouldn't be 
able to maintain a port in the long term but a working one might be a 
good starting point for other users and will certainly be a good way to 
learn more about the workings of the port system.

Cheers,
Niels