Subject: Re: Package building questions...
To: Unprivileged user <nobody@emsi.priv.at>
From: Martin J. Laubach <mjl@emsi.priv.at>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 02/21/1999 18:45:45
| > never do bulk builds, and would rather have the, say, amanda or postgres
| > package ask me instead of blindly trying to add a user.
| 
|   Especially since addnerd will just pick the highest available user id,
| which might not be such a good idea

  In fact (to be blunt) the add-variables-to-mk.conf is a horrible
mess. It is okay if one is building packages all day long, or for
different architectures with the same options, but for isolated builds
(which I'll just postulate are the majority), is non intuitive.

  Which is aggravated that many of those variables are inconsistently
named, poorly documented, and often I find out about them *after*
compiling a package and discovering it doesn't do what I expected.
(No, I'm not reading the Makefile before building, and often not
even the readme. Yes, it's my own fault entirely :)

  What _I_ would like, is a BATCH_BUILD option. Without it (the rule),
the package build procedure is allowed to ask me questions. With it
(the exception), it will rely on mk.conf.

  If the build needs obscure information, it should display something
along the lines of

	To successfully build foobar snozzlefuzz, we need to dedicate
	a user and group id for running "snozzled". Also, we need to know
	the height in millimeters of your monitor.

	Please press RETURN if you have all the information and
	want to continue the build...

  Well, I'm just living in a dream world, please wake me up.

	mjl