On Mon, Sep 21, 2026 at 02:03:49PM +0200, Thomas Dettbarn wrote: > Tl;dr: Please include a sentence about how to document licenses and branches. > > > Some perspective from a reader of the ports guide. > > Recently, I updated my port: > https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=178989586150156&w=2 > > It uses quite a few git submodules, most of them have tags, but one > of them was referenced only as a branch. And they all had different > licenses. > > Since I am a sucker for clean documentation (to make it easier for the > next guy), I wanted to be able to comment in the Makefile > > - That a certain submodule (DIST_TUPLE line), is using license X. > - That the long hash is referencing to branch Y, with timestamp Z. > > For sure, this information can be found by checking out the sub-repo, > and reading the git log... However, if you guys could include a > sentence like "Please comment the license, branch and timestamp in the > line above DIST_TUPLE" or "Add a comment with the license, branch and > timestamp to the end of the DIST_TUPLE" it would go a long way.
Strictly speaking licensing comments belong right before PERMIT_* And you don't necessarily need to document every single licence. What's important is the most restrictive one, and what it implies for the built package. Possibly with a few sidenotes in case there is something problematic that we would like replaced. In general, BSD/MIT like is the best. Apache and similar are a bit worse but not too bad, and then GPLv2/GPLv3, then special licences like vim. You generally do not need to document every single module, that would dilute responsability. In the end, it mostly summarizes as whether you can set PERMIT_PACKAGE to Yes, and why.
