Re: A plea or sanity in port options menu
On Mon, Feb 02, 2009 at 03:39:25PM -0500, Bill Moran wrote: In response to Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com: On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Bill Moran wrote: How about: Options for port-fu [ ] BRG Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing [X] QFZ Quantum Freeze Zulu rending At least that one gives me _some_ idea what those TLAs mean. There was talk some time ago of having extended descriptions. Several ideas, but the one that made the most sense to me would be a box at the bottom that would display a description as you moved through the options: [.] BRG [X] QFZ Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing with the . representing the cursor/highlight position. Move down and the bottom line would change to say Quantum Freeze Zulu rending. The nice thing about the box at the bottom is it would give a full line or possibly several lines for explanations. Seems like it could be added without breaking the existing system with an optional OPTIONS_DESC variable that would correspond with OPTIONS. I don't really know how hard that would be; ideas are cheap, implementation more costly. I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports infrastructure. I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking the time to describe their options. A quick test of some ports turns up this one: [ ] OPENGL OpenGL support True but useless. How about: [ ] OPENGL Use OpenGL graphics library ...which, at least give the user _some_ idea what they're doing. OpenGL probably isn't a good example, however. It's pretty easy to Google OpenGL and figure out what it is. Here's some more bizarre options: [X] EPUB Epub modules [X] EXTENSIONSExtensions [X] TEMPLATE Templates [X] TOOLS Tools I mean, if I enable Extensions, what happens? How do I figure out what happens? I have to read the Makefile, at which point having these options on a menu is pretty pointless. I mean, I can't even come up with a Google search to help me figure out what tools are involved here. There are some ports that do this very well. For example: [ ] NLS Use internationalized messages [ ] PAM Build with PAM support (server only) [ ] LDAP Build with LDAP authentication support [ ] MIT_KRB5 Build with MIT's kerberos support [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5 Builds with Heimdal kerberos support [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3) [X] XML Build with XML data type (server) [X] TZDATAUse internal timezone database (server) [ ] DEBUG Builds with debugging symbols [ ] ICU Use ICU for unicode collation (server) [ ] INTDATE Builds with 64-bit date/time type (server) I mean, a Google on ICU is liable to bring up all sorts of medical drama websites, but I can do a search for ICU unicode and find my answer on the first result. Not only am I told that optimized compiler flags are an option, but I'm told the exact one that will be used (-O3) The porters handbook doesn't seem to offer any helpful advice on these: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/makefile-options.html In fact, the examples it provides are excellent examples of doing it WRONG. Let me see about making a patch to the porters handbook to provide some advice ... While I'm not opposed to being verbose in the short descriptions there is a limit to the length of the message. If you want more accurate descriptions I have done the work to make it happen (ports/123185), and it is now sitting in portmgr territory. It's a modification to bsd.port.mk but it is the best way to truly solve the problem since there is a length limitation to the short field. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/123185 -- WXS ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: A plea or sanity in port options menu
On Mon, Feb 02, 2009 at 03:39:25PM -0500, Bill Moran wrote: In response to Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com: On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Bill Moran wrote: How about: Options for port-fu [ ] BRG Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing [X] QFZ Quantum Freeze Zulu rending At least that one gives me _some_ idea what those TLAs mean. This particular example is nonexistent and thus too far from reality. [snip] I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports infrastructure. I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking the time to describe their options. A quick test of some ports turns up this one: [ ] OPENGL OpenGL support True but useless. How about: [ ] OPENGL Use OpenGL graphics library ...which, at least give the user _some_ idea what they're doing. I don't see any difference here. OpenGL = Open Graphics Library, so your description is redundunt (Use Open Graphics Library graphics library). Well, you can write 'Use Open Graphics Library', but it is again not so much different from 'OpenGL support'. OpenGL probably isn't a good example, however. It's pretty easy to Google OpenGL and figure out what it is. As quite a number of other 'bad' option descriptions. Here's some more bizarre options: [X] EPUB Epub modules [X] EXTENSIONSExtensions [X] TEMPLATE Templates [X] TOOLS Tools I mean, if I enable Extensions, what happens? How do I figure out what happens? I have to read the Makefile, at which point having these options on a menu is pretty pointless. I mean, I can't even come up with a Google search to help me figure out what tools are involved here. There are some ports that do this very well. For example: [ ] NLS Use internationalized messages [ ] PAM Build with PAM support (server only) ^^ Exactly what you are fighting against. [ ] LDAP Build with LDAP authentication support [ ] MIT_KRB5 Build with MIT's kerberos support [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5 Builds with Heimdal kerberos support ^^^ The above 2 also. [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3) [X] XML Build with XML data type (server) [X] TZDATAUse internal timezone database (server) [ ] DEBUG Builds with debugging symbols [ ] ICU Use ICU for unicode collation (server) [ ] INTDATE Builds with 64-bit date/time type (server) I mean, a Google on ICU is liable to bring up all sorts of medical drama websites, but I can do a search for ICU unicode and find my answer on the first result. Not only am I told that optimized compiler flags are an option, but I'm told the exact one that will be used (-O3) The porters handbook doesn't seem to offer any helpful advice on these: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/makefile-options.html In fact, the examples it provides are excellent examples of doing it WRONG. Let me see about making a patch to the porters handbook to provide some advice ... Ok let's examine my 4 ports 3 of which do use OPTIONS. x11-toolkits/gtkdatabox: OPTIONS=GLADE Enable libglade2 support off \ GLADEUI Enable glade3 support off /usr/ports/devel/libglade2 cat pkg-descr LibGlade allows GLADE interfaces to be handled at runtime, freeing GUI development from code development. This allows an interface to be changed without requiring a re-compilation. /usr/ports/devel/glade3 cat pkg-descr Glade is a RAD tool to enable quick easy development of user interfaces for GTK+/GNOME. It can generate the C source code needed to create the interfaces designed within Glade's interface editor. Any idea here how to put all these into small line of description field? [RAD = Rapid Application Development, hope you know what GUI is] Do these long descriptions help you? x11-toolkits/slgtkdatabox: OPTIONS=SLGLADE Enable slglade support (run-time) off /usr/ports/devel/slglade cat pkg-descr SLglade is a S-Lang module that provides S-Lang bindings for the libglade library. Used in conjunction with SLgtk, it allows you to design your GUI with Glade (a GTK+ user interface builder), save the interface description in a Glade XML file, and then generate your S-Lang script's graphical interface directly from the XML at runtime. This should reduce the time spent developing SLgtk applications considerably, as it eliminates the tedious job of writing interface-creation code by hand. This is an update for Christopher Stawarz's SLglade module. WWW: http://laurent.perez2.free.fr/comp/slang/modules/modules.html Same here, short version of pkg-descr for slglade??? x11-toolkits/slgtk: OPTIONS=FITS Install gdk-pixbuf FITS image loader off
A plea or sanity in port options menu
I don't believe this is particularly useful: Options for port-fu [ ] BRG Enable BRG support [X] QFZ Enable QFZ support Quite honestly, if you can't figure out that checking the box next to BRG enables BRG support, then don't use a computer. However, if you don't already know what BRG _is_, then those menus are worthless gobbly-gook. So, you've held my hand long enough to teach me that putting an X in a box enables something, but you've given me absolutely NO idea what I've actually done. How about: Options for port-fu [ ] BRG Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing [X] QFZ Quantum Freeze Zulu rending At least that one gives me _some_ idea what those TLAs mean. This is so common in the ports infrastructure, that I'm sure a bazillion maintainers are going to scream at me for complaining about it. After all, _everyone_ else does the same thing. But it's completely worthless to have the description simply repeat what the tag is. It's also really bad UI design. Quite honestly, it makes me wonder if the port creator was even awake when they typed up the Makefile. Please, please, please stop this. I'm floored by the pervasiveness of this insanity, and there's absolutely no reason for it to continue. -- Bill Moran http://www.potentialtech.com http://people.collaborativefusion.com/~wmoran/ ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: A plea or sanity in port options menu
On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Bill Moran wrote: How about: Options for port-fu [ ] BRG Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing [X] QFZ Quantum Freeze Zulu rending At least that one gives me _some_ idea what those TLAs mean. There was talk some time ago of having extended descriptions. Several ideas, but the one that made the most sense to me would be a box at the bottom that would display a description as you moved through the options: [.] BRG [X] QFZ Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing with the . representing the cursor/highlight position. Move down and the bottom line would change to say Quantum Freeze Zulu rending. The nice thing about the box at the bottom is it would give a full line or possibly several lines for explanations. Seems like it could be added without breaking the existing system with an optional OPTIONS_DESC variable that would correspond with OPTIONS. I don't really know how hard that would be; ideas are cheap, implementation more costly. -Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: A plea or sanity in port options menu
In response to Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com: On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Bill Moran wrote: How about: Options for port-fu [ ] BRG Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing [X] QFZ Quantum Freeze Zulu rending At least that one gives me _some_ idea what those TLAs mean. There was talk some time ago of having extended descriptions. Several ideas, but the one that made the most sense to me would be a box at the bottom that would display a description as you moved through the options: [.] BRG [X] QFZ Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing with the . representing the cursor/highlight position. Move down and the bottom line would change to say Quantum Freeze Zulu rending. The nice thing about the box at the bottom is it would give a full line or possibly several lines for explanations. Seems like it could be added without breaking the existing system with an optional OPTIONS_DESC variable that would correspond with OPTIONS. I don't really know how hard that would be; ideas are cheap, implementation more costly. I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports infrastructure. I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking the time to describe their options. A quick test of some ports turns up this one: [ ] OPENGL OpenGL support True but useless. How about: [ ] OPENGL Use OpenGL graphics library ...which, at least give the user _some_ idea what they're doing. OpenGL probably isn't a good example, however. It's pretty easy to Google OpenGL and figure out what it is. Here's some more bizarre options: [X] EPUB Epub modules [X] EXTENSIONSExtensions [X] TEMPLATE Templates [X] TOOLS Tools I mean, if I enable Extensions, what happens? How do I figure out what happens? I have to read the Makefile, at which point having these options on a menu is pretty pointless. I mean, I can't even come up with a Google search to help me figure out what tools are involved here. There are some ports that do this very well. For example: [ ] NLS Use internationalized messages [ ] PAM Build with PAM support (server only) [ ] LDAP Build with LDAP authentication support [ ] MIT_KRB5 Build with MIT's kerberos support [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5 Builds with Heimdal kerberos support [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3) [X] XML Build with XML data type (server) [X] TZDATAUse internal timezone database (server) [ ] DEBUG Builds with debugging symbols [ ] ICU Use ICU for unicode collation (server) [ ] INTDATE Builds with 64-bit date/time type (server) I mean, a Google on ICU is liable to bring up all sorts of medical drama websites, but I can do a search for ICU unicode and find my answer on the first result. Not only am I told that optimized compiler flags are an option, but I'm told the exact one that will be used (-O3) The porters handbook doesn't seem to offer any helpful advice on these: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/makefile-options.html In fact, the examples it provides are excellent examples of doing it WRONG. Let me see about making a patch to the porters handbook to provide some advice ... -- Bill Moran http://www.potentialtech.com http://people.collaborativefusion.com/~wmoran/ ___ freebsd-ports@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ports To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-ports-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: A plea or sanity in port options menu
On Monday 02 February 2009 6:39:25 pm Bill Moran wrote: In response to Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com: On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Bill Moran wrote: How about: Options for port-fu [ ] BRG Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing [X] QFZ Quantum Freeze Zulu rending At least that one gives me _some_ idea what those TLAs mean. There was talk some time ago of having extended descriptions. Several ideas, but the one that made the most sense to me would be a box at the bottom that would display a description as you moved through the options: [.] BRG [X] QFZ Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing with the . representing the cursor/highlight position. Move down and the bottom line would change to say Quantum Freeze Zulu rending. The nice thing about the box at the bottom is it would give a full line or possibly several lines for explanations. Seems like it could be added without breaking the existing system with an optional OPTIONS_DESC variable that would correspond with OPTIONS. I don't really know how hard that would be; ideas are cheap, implementation more costly. I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports infrastructure. I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking the time to describe their options. A quick test of some ports turns up this one: [ ] OPENGL OpenGL support True but useless. How about: [ ] OPENGL Use OpenGL graphics library ...which, at least give the user _some_ idea what they're doing. OpenGL probably isn't a good example, however. It's pretty easy to Google OpenGL and figure out what it is. Here's some more bizarre options: [X] EPUB Epub modules [X] EXTENSIONSExtensions [X] TEMPLATE Templates [X] TOOLS Tools I mean, if I enable Extensions, what happens? How do I figure out what happens? I have to read the Makefile, at which point having these options on a menu is pretty pointless. I mean, I can't even come up with a Google search to help me figure out what tools are involved here. There are some ports that do this very well. For example: [ ] NLS Use internationalized messages [ ] PAM Build with PAM support (server only) [ ] LDAP Build with LDAP authentication support [ ] MIT_KRB5 Build with MIT's kerberos support [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5 Builds with Heimdal kerberos support [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3) [X] XML Build with XML data type (server) [X] TZDATAUse internal timezone database (server) [ ] DEBUG Builds with debugging symbols [ ] ICU Use ICU for unicode collation (server) [ ] INTDATE Builds with 64-bit date/time type (server) I mean, a Google on ICU is liable to bring up all sorts of medical drama websites, but I can do a search for ICU unicode and find my answer on the first result. Not only am I told that optimized compiler flags are an option, but I'm told the exact one that will be used (-O3) The porters handbook doesn't seem to offer any helpful advice on these: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/makefile-options.html In fact, the examples it provides are excellent examples of doing it WRONG. Let me see about making a patch to the porters handbook to provide some advice ... +1,000,000 on your idea. Yes .. you are absolutely right ... even if you know your way around make gcc compiling software .. and even if you _really_ know your way around make gcc compiling software, there's no chance on earth that anyone can tell what does every single option on every single Makefile actually mean. As you pointed out: [ ] BRG [X] QFZ means _nothing_ to 99.9% of the users... Be Really Grumpy? Buy Red Goggles? Quite Faster Zapping?? Quit Filtering Zealots?? This kind of things really hurts the good documentation reputation that FreeBSD has rightfully earned. And I do agree with you: I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports infrastructure. I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking the time to describe their options. And once again .. this is the way to go for me too: There are some ports that do this very well. For example: [ ] NLS Use internationalized messages [ ] PAM Build with PAM support (server only) [ ] LDAP Build with LDAP authentication support [ ] MIT_KRB5 Build with MIT's kerberos support [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5 Builds with Heimdal kerberos support [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3) [X] XML Build with XML data type (server) [X] TZDATAUse internal timezone database (server) [ ] DEBUG Builds with debugging symbols [ ] ICU Use ICU for unicode collation (server) [ ] INTDATE Builds with 64-bit date/time type (server)
Re: A plea or sanity in port options menu
Gonzalo Nemmi wrote: On Monday 02 February 2009 6:39:25 pm Bill Moran wrote: In response to Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com: On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Bill Moran wrote: How about: Options for port-fu [ ] BRG Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing [X] QFZ Quantum Freeze Zulu rending At least that one gives me _some_ idea what those TLAs mean. There was talk some time ago of having extended descriptions. Several ideas, but the one that made the most sense to me would be a box at the bottom that would display a description as you moved through the options: [.] BRG [X] QFZ Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing with the . representing the cursor/highlight position. Move down and the bottom line would change to say Quantum Freeze Zulu rending. The nice thing about the box at the bottom is it would give a full line or possibly several lines for explanations. Seems like it could be added without breaking the existing system with an optional OPTIONS_DESC variable that would correspond with OPTIONS. I don't really know how hard that would be; ideas are cheap, implementation more costly. I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports infrastructure. I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking the time to describe their options. A quick test of some ports turns up this one: [ ] OPENGL OpenGL support True but useless. How about: [ ] OPENGL Use OpenGL graphics library ...which, at least give the user _some_ idea what they're doing. OpenGL probably isn't a good example, however. It's pretty easy to Google OpenGL and figure out what it is. Here's some more bizarre options: [X] EPUB Epub modules [X] EXTENSIONSExtensions [X] TEMPLATE Templates [X] TOOLS Tools I mean, if I enable Extensions, what happens? How do I figure out what happens? I have to read the Makefile, at which point having these options on a menu is pretty pointless. I mean, I can't even come up with a Google search to help me figure out what tools are involved here. There are some ports that do this very well. For example: [ ] NLS Use internationalized messages [ ] PAM Build with PAM support (server only) [ ] LDAP Build with LDAP authentication support [ ] MIT_KRB5 Build with MIT's kerberos support [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5 Builds with Heimdal kerberos support [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3) [X] XML Build with XML data type (server) [X] TZDATAUse internal timezone database (server) [ ] DEBUG Builds with debugging symbols [ ] ICU Use ICU for unicode collation (server) [ ] INTDATE Builds with 64-bit date/time type (server) I mean, a Google on ICU is liable to bring up all sorts of medical drama websites, but I can do a search for ICU unicode and find my answer on the first result. Not only am I told that optimized compiler flags are an option, but I'm told the exact one that will be used (-O3) The porters handbook doesn't seem to offer any helpful advice on these: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/makefile-options.html In fact, the examples it provides are excellent examples of doing it WRONG. Let me see about making a patch to the porters handbook to provide some advice ... +1,000,000 on your idea. Yes .. you are absolutely right ... even if you know your way around make gcc compiling software .. and even if you _really_ know your way around make gcc compiling software, there's no chance on earth that anyone can tell what does every single option on every single Makefile actually mean. As you pointed out: [ ] BRG [X] QFZ means _nothing_ to 99.9% of the users... Be Really Grumpy? Buy Red Goggles? Quite Faster Zapping?? Quit Filtering Zealots?? This kind of things really hurts the good documentation reputation that FreeBSD has rightfully earned. And I do agree with you: I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports infrastructure. I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking the time to describe their options. And once again .. this is the way to go for me too: There are some ports that do this very well. For example: [ ] NLS Use internationalized messages [ ] PAM Build with PAM support (server only) [ ] LDAP Build with LDAP authentication support [ ] MIT_KRB5 Build with MIT's kerberos support [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5 Builds with Heimdal kerberos support [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3) [X] XML Build with XML data type (server) [X] TZDATAUse internal timezone database (server) [ ] DEBUG Builds with debugging symbols [ ] ICU Use ICU for unicode collation (server) [ ] INTDATE Builds with 64-bit date/time
Re: A plea or sanity in port options menu
On Monday 02 February 2009 10:29:16 pm Eitan Adler wrote: Gonzalo Nemmi wrote: On Monday 02 February 2009 6:39:25 pm Bill Moran wrote: In response to Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com: On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Bill Moran wrote: How about: Options for port-fu [ ] BRG Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing [X] QFZ Quantum Freeze Zulu rending At least that one gives me _some_ idea what those TLAs mean. There was talk some time ago of having extended descriptions. Several ideas, but the one that made the most sense to me would be a box at the bottom that would display a description as you moved through the options: [.] BRG [X] QFZ Bernstein Riggs Guillotine parsing with the . representing the cursor/highlight position. Move down and the bottom line would change to say Quantum Freeze Zulu rending. The nice thing about the box at the bottom is it would give a full line or possibly several lines for explanations. Seems like it could be added without breaking the existing system with an optional OPTIONS_DESC variable that would correspond with OPTIONS. I don't really know how hard that would be; ideas are cheap, implementation more costly. I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports infrastructure. I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking the time to describe their options. A quick test of some ports turns up this one: [ ] OPENGL OpenGL support True but useless. How about: [ ] OPENGL Use OpenGL graphics library ...which, at least give the user _some_ idea what they're doing. OpenGL probably isn't a good example, however. It's pretty easy to Google OpenGL and figure out what it is. Here's some more bizarre options: [X] EPUB Epub modules [X] EXTENSIONSExtensions [X] TEMPLATE Templates [X] TOOLS Tools I mean, if I enable Extensions, what happens? How do I figure out what happens? I have to read the Makefile, at which point having these options on a menu is pretty pointless. I mean, I can't even come up with a Google search to help me figure out what tools are involved here. There are some ports that do this very well. For example: [ ] NLS Use internationalized messages [ ] PAM Build with PAM support (server only) [ ] LDAP Build with LDAP authentication support [ ] MIT_KRB5 Build with MIT's kerberos support [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5 Builds with Heimdal kerberos support [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3) [X] XML Build with XML data type (server) [X] TZDATAUse internal timezone database (server) [ ] DEBUG Builds with debugging symbols [ ] ICU Use ICU for unicode collation (server) [ ] INTDATE Builds with 64-bit date/time type (server) I mean, a Google on ICU is liable to bring up all sorts of medical drama websites, but I can do a search for ICU unicode and find my answer on the first result. Not only am I told that optimized compiler flags are an option, but I'm told the exact one that will be used (-O3) The porters handbook doesn't seem to offer any helpful advice on these: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/makefile-options.ht ml In fact, the examples it provides are excellent examples of doing it WRONG. Let me see about making a patch to the porters handbook to provide some advice ... +1,000,000 on your idea. Yes .. you are absolutely right ... even if you know your way around make gcc compiling software .. and even if you _really_ know your way around make gcc compiling software, there's no chance on earth that anyone can tell what does every single option on every single Makefile actually mean. As you pointed out: [ ] BRG [X] QFZ means _nothing_ to 99.9% of the users... Be Really Grumpy? Buy Red Goggles? Quite Faster Zapping?? Quit Filtering Zealots?? This kind of things really hurts the good documentation reputation that FreeBSD has rightfully earned. And I do agree with you: I don't think there's any need for any new features in the ports infrastructure. I think it's just a matter of Makefile authors taking the time to describe their options. And once again .. this is the way to go for me too: There are some ports that do this very well. For example: [ ] NLS Use internationalized messages [ ] PAM Build with PAM support (server only) [ ] LDAP Build with LDAP authentication support [ ] MIT_KRB5 Build with MIT's kerberos support [ ] HEIMDAL_KRB5 Builds with Heimdal kerberos support [ ] OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS Builds with compiler optimizations (-O3) [X] XML Build with XML data type (server) [X] TZDATAUse internal timezone database (server) [
