Hi everybody, coming from an Ubuntu background, I've been using fink for the last months but am left quite unimpressed by the quality and up-to-dateness of their packages (as well as availability and speed of the mirrors). Of course it is an effort led solely by volunteers and as such I can't really complain about the service they are providing. I have found however, that software provided by the macports project is more recent and generally more hassle-free to install and work with. This of course was the long version of "thanks what you guys are doing!".. However, I am dearly missing two programs from my KDE days which are digikam and amarok. (http://www.digikam.org & http://amarok.kde.org). I could not find those in your ports database so my question is: are they provided by the "kde" port and as such not installable individually or aren't they part of the macports project at all? If so: are there any plans to include them in the future? In any case, thanks for providing this fantastic service and best regards, Niels.
Niels Ganser wrote:
However, I am dearly missing two programs from my KDE days which are digikam and amarok. (http://www.digikam.org & http://amarok.kde.org). I could not find those in your ports database so my question is: are they provided by the "kde" port and as such not installable individually or aren't they part of the macports project at all? If so: are there any plans to include them in the future?
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... 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. Rainer
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
Niels Ganser wrote:
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..)
No, you can't search for a file at a specific location as the files installed by a port are not known prior to installing. But `port search' looks for the given search string in port names and their descriptions. Rainer
participants (2)
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Niels Ganser
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Rainer Müller