Opened 5 years ago
Last modified 3 years ago
#58161 new defect
Guide does not explain that selectors use regular expressions
| Reported by: | chrstphrchvz (Christopher Chavez) | Owned by: | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | Normal | Milestone: | |
| Component: | guide | Version: | 2.5.4 |
| Keywords: | Cc: | cjones051073 (Chris Jones) | |
| Port: |
Description
Following up from https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/3316:
Prior to the deletion of py-dns, using port echo depends:py-dns output not only the dependencies of py-dns but also those of py-dnspython, a completely separate port, leading to some confusion. Effectively what happened was that port echo found the dependencies of any port with a name containing py-dns, which included py-dnspython.
At a minimum, I believe this behavior is inconsistent with the documented usage of port echo depends:portname in the guide where portname is a single port's exact name rather than a pattern of some sort (https://guide.macports.org/#using.port.dependents and https://guide.macports.org/#using.common-tasks.finddepending).
Maybe there are other commands that do not treat portname as something to match exactly, but this is the only one I'm aware of.
Change History (6)
comment:1 Changed 5 years ago by ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)
comment:2 Changed 5 years ago by ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)
| Component: | base → guide |
|---|---|
| Summary: | portname not treated as exact name in `port echo depends:portname` → Guide does not explain that selectors use regular expressions |
comment:3 Changed 5 years ago by ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)
When I want to find ports depending on another port portname what I usually use is:
port echo depends:':portname($|\s)'
comment:4 Changed 5 years ago by chrstphrchvz (Christopher Chavez)
Is it really more common to use patterns here rather than a specific portname? Why not have a flag to enable pattern matching, and without the flag only do an exact match? I imagine that would be more user-friendly. See Perry's comment: https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/3316#issuecomment-451458556
comment:5 Changed 3 years ago by chrstphrchvz (Christopher Chavez)
Same issue being discussed again on macports-dev list: https://lists.macports.org/pipermail/macports-dev/2021-June/043563.html
comment:6 Changed 3 years ago by cjones051073 (Chris Jones)
| Cc: | cjones051073 added |
|---|
You are correct, this is how selectors like
depends:behave. What you specify is a regular expression, not an exact name. This is a feature, not a bug. If the documentation says it's an exact name, the documentation is wrong. A lot of the documentation is outdated or wrong and the whole guide should really be rewritten from scratch. Unfortunately, that will take a lot of planning and work that nobody has yet found the time to do.