[ On Saturday, January 11, 2003 at 19:12:18 (-0800), Jeremy C. Reed wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: READMEs for binary packages?
>
> On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> 
> > All these README.html files are all very well and good for people who
> > want to build packages from source all the time, but has anyone put any
> > thought into creating README and DESCR files for binary packages,
> > especially ones that could co-exist with multiple releases and get along
> > happily in a sparsely populated "packages" tree?
> 
> Do you mean having the NetBSD package maintainer(s) write new READMEs, if
> needed?

No, I mean something very much like the README.html files now created
for pkgsrc -- but instead created for the binary "packages" hierarchy,
and created in such a way that the package version IDs are included in
the file names, and links, and such.

In case you hadn't noticed the current README.html infrastructure for
pkgsrc is useless if you don't also have your pkgsrc working directory
visible on your WWW/FTP server(s).  It's also somewhat less than useful
in face of a sparse "packages" hierarchy too (I don't want to, or rather
simply cannot, build and maintain *everything*! ;-).

> The DESCR (+DESC) files are already included with binary releases (plus
> they have added homepage URL too).

Same for those files -- if they're to be referenced by the binaries
README.html's then they need to be included in the "packages" hierarchy,
and also with package IDs and version IDs as part of their file names
(and hopefully with a ".txt" suffix too so that apache or whatever
doesn't have to be re-configured to figure out they contain text).

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;            <g.a.woods@ieee.org>;           <woods@robohack.ca>
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