Re: Seeking review of wip/freem package

["John P. Willis" <jpw%coherent-logic.com@localhost>]

On 8/19/21 5:15 AM, Greg Troxel wrote:
> "John P. Willis" <jpw%coherent-logic.com@localhost> writes:
>
> > I'm hoping to get some community review/feedback on my "freem" package
> > in pkgsrc-wip, so I can get an idea of what the next steps are/what changes
> > I need to make for inclusion in mainstream pkgsrc, in addition to wanting
> > the package to be of good quality.
>
> Looking very quickly (and some of this is for the benefit of others as a
> sort of checklist)
>
>    pkglint reports no issues
>
>    If you haven't built with "PKG_DEVELOPER=yes", please do.  (Really, if
>    you are developing packages, just set that in general for your
>    environment.)

I have built with PKG_DEVELOPER=yes since beginning this project.

>    TODO is empty (besides 'ask for review'), which is good.
>
>    I tend not to have a double lank line before bl3 section.  Not a big
>    deal, maybe that's just me.
>
>    Typically bsd.pkg.mk is last, after the included bl3 files.

Will fix.

>    DESCR typically does not point to docs.  HOMEPAGE is there for finding
>    the canonical entry page.  This package installs docs (which is great)
>    and presumably if a pointer is warranted it would be in there.  So I
>    would just drop that line.

Will also fix.

>    There is no MESSAGE, which is good.
>
>    There are no patches which is a nice sign about upstream, and I would
>    have checked that patches are explained and filed upstream with
>    bugtracker URLs unless they are clearly not appropriate for upstream.
>
>    It looks like man pages (or sources?) are also installed in
>    share/doc/freem.  (They are installed in man directories, which is
>    good.)  I don't follow this, and it seems from Makefile like an
>    upstream bug or difference of opinion on norms.

I'll look into this and see if I can figure out what's going on.
I am both the package developer and the upstream developer.

>    I wonder if the sysconfdir argument is needed as I would expect
>    GNU_CONFIGURE to arrange for that automatically.  But I'm fuzzy on
>    that, so this may just be my confusion.

It seemed I needed to do that due to a difference between the
pkgsrc expectations and Autotools defaults.

>    PLIST has things in var/freem.  I don't follow this at all because the
>    files don't appear (I have read zero of your docs!) to be things that
>    are modified.  If they are sort of library files to be read then they
>    belong in share/freem if they are independent of CPU type and probably
>    lib/freem of libdata/freem if they depend on cpu type.

The M programming language has a database integrated. FreeM organizes
related databases and routines into "namespaces", which by default are
USER and SYSTEM. USER routines and databases go in 
$PREFIX/var/freem/USER/{routines,globals} and can be modified by any 
user on the system.

The SYSTEM namespace holds library code and databases that are 
accessible to all users, but with the requirement that SYSTEM databases
are read/write to everyone, but SYSTEM routines are read-only to 
everyone but the system manager/superuser.

I'm of course open to suggestions as to where to put the namespaces, and 
can probably defer creation of some of those locations to runtime within 
the "fmadm" (FreeM Administrator) utility. (Specifically "fmadm 
configure", which must be run prior to using FreeM at all).


>    The previous comment might not apply to journals.txt.  But usually for
>    var-ish things the package would create the directory and not the
>    file, which would be created at runtime.
>
>    var raises the question of uid, because a var dir needs a uid and
>    often packages that are daemons run under a specific uid that is
>    created as part of the package.  But programming languages aren't like
>    that.  So a var-like place needs to be in some cache or config dir in
>    a per-user sort of place.  I simply have not dug in to what's going
>    on, but hope this is helpful.

The "fmadm" utility will set permissions appropriately when 
creating/managing routines, databases, and namespaces.

> and not about the package but
>
>    upstream gets nerd style points for an info file (seriously, not
>    saracasm)
>    
>    

Thanks!