Creating source packages?

[Anders F Björklund]

Jay Levitt wrote:

> I have a developer who lives in a rural area, with no broadband  
> access.
> (OK, stop laughing.)  Worse, his 28.8K dialup ISP has an 8-hour max
> session time, so anything signifcantly large just can't be downloaded,
> period.
>
> I want to send him a DVD-ROM of some large packages.  Ideally, I'd  
> want
> them to look like just another source to MacPorts, so that the builds,
> updates, etc. all happen within MacPorts.  (Kinda like Fedora install
> CDs.)    And I want them to include all dependencies.

Are you sure you want to send him sources then, and not binaries ?
(in Fedora et al the install CDs usually contain the binary RPMS,
while the sources are in the "SRPMS", or Source RPMS, packages...)
I guess if you have a full DVD anyway, you'd want to include both.

But ports sources are rather small even on a dial-up, say like: 5.0M,
so chances are that it is the "distfiles" that you want to send him ?

> I've been able to create .mpkgs, but those re binary packages.  The
> guide mentions portpkgs, but doesn't say how to create them.  Neither
> does the man page.
>
> Is there any documentation on creating source packages?

Unfortunately you can only create the source package portpkg.xar
as a part of the "port submit" command, which also sends them in...

Theoretically there could be "port portpkg" command (or something),
as it is a separate function in base already. Like the "port srpm" ?

--anders