Re: MESSAGE considered harmful

[Tim Zingelman <tez%netbsd.org@localhost>]

I would ask instead that the binary package managers please learn how
to show this information to users, because (at least in my opinion)
where I have added them, they provide information that will avoid the
potential for serious disappointment by the users.  Such as
security/mit-krb5/MESSAGE and security/openssl/MESSAGE.SunOS

If 'make install' leaves the software in an unsafe (default password)
or unusable state, I think a MESSAGE is warranted.

The latter of my examples reminds me... what about all the platform
specific MESSAGE.platform files?  Would you deprecate them too?

Thanks for listening,

 - Tim


On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 6:50 PM, Greg Troxel <gdt%ir.bbn.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> I think we have a vast overuse of MESSAGE.  Many package semm to have
> instructions to the user, but these are really just the README for the
> package, and I think should be in ${PREFIX}/share/doc/pkgname/README.txt
> instead.  MESSAGES is a magic location that doesn't show up in "pkg_info
> -L".   I realize there was some rationale that some packages were super
> special, but that seems not to really make sense any more.  And, with
> binary package mnagagers, the notion that people will see them seems
> dubious.
>
> So I think we should move towards deprecating MESSAGE, except perhaps in
> very limited circumstances where there is an articulated reason why it
> really makes sense.