Re: Enable cups for all packages?

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:23:27 +0100
Wolfgang Solfrank <Wolfgang%Solfrank.net@localhost> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> > RTFM is not the real answer. It is too complicated to get the
> > information in all this information overflow.
> 
> Huh?  You go in any pkgsrc directory that has a build option and type
> make. It tells you something like the following:
> --------------------------------------------
> The supported build options for ... are:
> 
>       ...
> 
> The currently selected build options are:
> 
>       ...
> 
> You can select which build options to use by setting
> PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS or the following variable.  Its current value is
> shown:
> 
>       PKG_OPTIONS....
> --------------------------------------------
> 
> While I agree that there is information that's too complicated to get
> at do to the amount of it, that's not true for PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS.
> 
There are several separate issues here.  First, there really is too
much information for everyone to keep track of.  I not only read
pkgsrc.txt regularly, I literally had it open in another window when I
posted, because I'm working on another package.  I knew about
PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS but I assumed it was a system-set variable that
sites should not change.

Second, though, I wonder if cups is sufficiently pervasive that it
should be visible globally by default, just as inet6 is.  The issue is
not so much "how do I set cups?" as "what are the pervasive options
that one might want to set in PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS?"  In fact, I've been
contemplating writing a script that would go through pkgsrc and produce
a cross-reference of all options and what packages use them.  (Yes, I'm
aware of options.description; it's not the same thing.)

                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb