Prompt what package to install when it is missing

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Nov 11, 2011, at 14:51, Jeremy Lavergne wrote:

>> What about GUI programs? What about manpages or
>> perl modules or php modules etc. that people sometimes ask about?
> 
> That's outside the scope of what we're trying to do here.
> 
> We're only after the programs people would like to execute from $PATH but
> cannot be found.

Today, that's what we're after. Other days, we're after perl modules:

http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2011-May/024426.html

Other times, we want to know what port provides a certain header or library we don't have on our systems that's causing some port to fail to build because someone forgot a dependency.


> I'd say simply mimic Ubuntu. We can then add further features later.
> 
> It'd be nice if we don't have to manipulate a user's shell script more
> than adding the sourcing of a script somewhere; either way, if we stick to
> something similar to other distributions (at least to start with) more
> people will be familiar with the behavior.

What do Ubuntu or other distributions do, and how do they do them? I haven't used them.