Anders F Björklund <afb@macports.org> on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 at 5:41 AM -0800 wrote:

There are some common typos in it like "OS X" (Mac OS X) and "Xwindows" (X Window System) and it should probably be less Apple/Mac OS X centric (i.e. should mention explicitly that 2.1-2.5 applies to Mac OS X, and say something instead of "Apple-supplied" - like vendor-supplied, etc etc...)

It would also be nice if it could mention "open source and free software", instead of just saying "open source Unix software" and not mentioning GNU ? This is IMHO also another reason why it is important to get License metadata into the ports, as it is now you'll have to dig through homepages/licenses.

You can look at the old guide for some hints, it uses "third party software" and has much more info on the common heritage with the BSD Ports/collections. A "MacPorts for people used to *BSD Ports" section might even be a good idea. Besides regular Mac OS X, MacPorts is also usable on FreeBSD (with GNUstep).

All good points. I haven't yet got to that level of detail yet, but I agree with you it needs to be done. I'll hang onto these suggestions and address them the best I can after getting all the raw data I can from the old guide.

I will try to be of some assistance about those, we can take either in the regular guide xml or if you're doing some kind of parallel guide we can discuss it here on these mailing lists or on some Wiki page...

As it is now we have two kinds of binaries: ARCHIVES (.tgz, .tbz, etc) and PACKAGES (.pkg, .rpm, etc). Eventually these might both be able to use the same XAR archive, but as of now they're still separate...

The archives are created with "port archive" or by enabling archivemode. They can (confusingly!) be found under /opt/local/var/macports/packages with subdirectories for each platform (e.g. darwin) and arch (e.g. i386)

The packages are created with something like "port pkg" or "port rpm" and are found in either the work directory or /opt/local/src/macports. Since .pkg is a dir bundle, it is converted to one file with "port dmg".

The main differences is that the archives are used within the port system, to avoid having to rebuild a port from source, and that the packages are used outside the port system, without even needing MacPorts installed.

Besides the binary packages, we also have source packages. These consist of the Portfile and all needed files/ (patches and other supporting files), and they come in either ".portpkg" (XAR) or ".nosrc.rpm" (SRPM) flavors.

Normally there is not much need to use source packages, since the binary packages can be built directly from the ports tree (whether rsync or svn) but they are useful for port submissions or for storage of older versions.

In order to build a new binary from a source package, all the corresponding distfiles are also needed. Normally these are only kept around as checksums, but can be mirrored locally - or even included in the case of ".src.rpm".

When building packages, all dependencies must be installed from ports or archives - installations made from packages do not help and must be redone. This is because the binary packages are *not* registered within MacPorts.

Hopefully that should be enough to start, and let me know if I am mistaken...

I'll have to look at your descriptions later tonight (I hope) and write something up and send it back to the list for more peer review. BTW, I don't want a parallel guide; I'd like to get the new one replaced and I'm willing to go take whatever suggestions, contributions, or changes the community thinks necessary to make a new guide official. I just think the modifying the old guide is too difficult if we want very much improvement. Thanks very much for your help! Mark