The example portfile in the "doc" folder of base should pass lint

[cooljeanius (Eric Gallager)]

port -v lint --nitpick reports the following problems for doc/exampleport/Portfile:

--->  Verifying Portfile for glib2
Warning: Variant puredarwin does not have a description
Warning: Maintainer email address for ryandesign includes @macports.org
Warning: no license set
Error: Portfile parent directory doc does not match primary category devel
Error: Portfile directory exampleport does not match port name glib2
--->  2 errors and 3 warnings found.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

I vote for deleting the exampleport directory. I have no recollection of seeing it before and it hasn't been updated since 2007 and is clearly completely out of touch with our current practices, which are already documented in the guide.

[cooljeanius (Eric Gallager)]

If we're going to remove the example port, then I'd at least like to see my portfile for portfile-gen to be committed to trunk, so that we can tell users who want to see an example port to just use portfile-gen to output one. (My ticket for it is #37797 btw)

[larryv (Lawrence Velázquez)]

Replying to egall@…:

If we're going to remove the example port, then I'd at least like to see my portfile for portfile-gen to be committed to trunk, so that we can tell users who want to see an example port to just use portfile-gen to output one.

Or we could just keep pointing them ​to the Guide.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Replying to ryandesign@…:

I vote for deleting the exampleport directory.

#39321 wants to delete the entire old "doc" directory.

[cooljeanius (Eric Gallager)]

Replying to ryandesign@…:

Replying to ryandesign@…:

I vote for deleting the exampleport directory.

#39321 wants to delete the entire old "doc" directory.

That's a different one. That's browser:trunk/doc (which I'm okay with because that's replaced by browser:trunk/doc-new with pretty much the same thing), while this is in browser:trunk/base/doc which is different. I agree though that having so many redundant "doc" directories can be kinda confusing... I would like one to remain in base though, as it's useful to have docs in the source tarball.

[larryv (Lawrence Velázquez)]

Replying to egall@…:

I would like one to remain in base though, as it's useful to have docs in the source tarball.

Useful to whom? If we deleted trunk/base/doc, I would bet a very large amount of money that no user would ever complain about it.

[neverpanic (Clemens Lang)]

Replying to larryv@…:

Useful to whom? If we deleted trunk/base/doc, I would bet a very large amount of money that no user would ever complain about it.

I'm willing to call that bet. Have you even looked at source:trunk/base/doc? It contains manpages, and all config file templates. Deleting it will render MacPorts unusable.

[cooljeanius (Eric Gallager)]

Replying to larryv@…:

Useful to whom?

People who've downloaded the source tarball and don't want to open a web browser just to view documentation? It's common practice to include documentation in source tarballs; people expect docs to be in source tarballs, or else they wouldn't keep including them in their own source tarballs.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Replying to egall@…:

Replying to ryandesign@…:

#39321 wants to delete the entire old "doc" directory.

That's a different one.

Oh... you're right, my mistake.

Replying to egall@…:

Replying to larryv@…:

Useful to whom?

People who've downloaded the source tarball and don't want to open a web browser just to view documentation? It's common practice to include documentation in source tarballs; people expect docs to be in source tarballs, or else they wouldn't keep including them in their own source tarballs.

MacPorts documentation is fractured into many different sources: the guide, the main web site, the trac wiki, the manpages, and some random text files. Only the latter two have been included in our source tarballs thus far, and I have no especially urgent interest in including documentation from the other sources in the tarball. To my knowledge nobody has ever requested that.

And as was stated, most of what's in the doc directory today is not intended for the user to look at directly. The only files that are are the INTERNALS file and the exampleport directory. Everything else is there to be installed with make install.

There is a wide variety of software in the world, with many different ways of being built, and a correspondingly huge number of things that could appear in a portfile, limited only by the extents of the Tcl language. I really don't feel that a single so-called example port is useful, especially as it gets out of date over time. If the exampleport directory is to be kept at all, I'd prefer to replace its contents with a README that names a half dozen or so ports in the ports tree that would serve as good simple examples of various techniques. But the guide would probably be a more natural place for such documentation to go.

[larryv (Lawrence Velázquez)]

Replying to cal@…:

I'm willing to call that bet. Have you even looked at source:trunk/base/doc? It contains manpages, and all config file templates.

Hm, you’re right. I must have been thinking about one of the other 15 million “doc” directories, because I’ve definitely looked at these manpage sources before. My fault.

[larryv (Lawrence Velázquez)]

Replying to egall@…:

People who've downloaded the source tarball and don't want to open a web browser just to view documentation? It's common practice to include documentation in source tarballs; people expect docs to be in source tarballs, or else they wouldn't keep including them in their own source tarballs.

There’s a difference between the documentation that is installed and the documentation that is only in the tarball. I maintain that removing whatever documentation is not installed (e.g., moving INTERNALS somewhere else in the repository and deleting exampleport) would result in negligible, if not zero, complaints.

(Excluding documentation that’s actually relevant to distributing the source, like LICENSE and NEWS.)

[cooljeanius (Eric Gallager)]

There’s a difference between the documentation that is installed and the documentation that is only in the tarball.

At least in my view, this is more of an argument for actually installing the documentation that is currently only in the tarball instead of one for deleting it.

[larryv (Lawrence Velázquez)]

Replying to egall@…:

At least in my view, this is more of an argument for actually installing the documentation that is currently only in the tarball instead of one for deleting it.

Or it’s an argument for considering whether this “documentation”—which by most accounts is not worth installing—should be kept around at all, especially when there is better documentation elsewhere.

[cooljeanius (Eric Gallager)]

anyway tabs were changed to spaces in r106666 so that's kind of a step, even if it doesn't actually silence any lint warnings

[kurthindenburg (Kurt Hindenburg)]

Was there any consensus on what needs done here?

[raimue (Rainer Müller)]

If we cannot keep this example up to date, let's remove it from base and make the guide the canonical source for documentation. This Portfile has not been changed in four years and I doubt anyone has actually looked at the exampleport in order to learn how to write a port.

[Kurt Hindenburg <kurt.hindenburg@…>]

In 4de540d9e9598335203978d551c8a84fff97a2b0/macports-base:

Remove outdated doc/exampleport

closes #39051