KDE_BUILD_PLIST: The new plist.* system for KDE/FreeBSD

Copyright (c) Alan Eldridge (alane@freebsd.org) Covered by BSD License.

$Id: kde-build-plist.pod,v 1.2 2003/03/23 20:38:41 alane Exp $

The primary goal of this system is to eliminate PLIST_SUB from the KDE ports. This ultimately makes it easier to maintain the plists when upgrading or making changes that will affect their content.

Tools

You need the have my script gen-plist, or an equivalent which will do an installation in a temporary directory in order to build the plist.

You can get this script from: http://people.freebsd.org/~alane/gen-plist on my FreeBSD web page. (It says ksh up top, but should run under BSD sh just fine. Let me know if it doesn't.)

Here's the help from gen-plist:

  This is 'gen-plist' v. 1.1.
  Copyright (c) 2002 Alan Eldridge <alane@geeksrus.net>.
  Usage: gen-plist [options] [--] [install-plist [uninstall-plist]] [make opts]
  Options:
          -h,--help       Show this help.
          -V,--version    Show version number.
          -x,--debug      Turn on shell command tracing.
          -m,--man <file> Write Makefile man page entries here.
          -p,--prefix <dir>
                          Installs to here [/usr/local].
          -v.--var        Variable containing top level dir [DESTDIR].
          --              Stop option processing.
  NOTES:
  1. If neither file is specified, writes the plist to stdout.
  2. If only an install-plist file is specified, writes the uninstall part
     of the plist there, too.
  3. If -m/--man is not specified, does not write any info about man pages.

Overview

The idea behind this mechanism is that instead of a single pkg-plist file, the plist file is constructed from fragments, based on what knobs the user sets when making the port.

Every port that uses this feature has a files/plist.base file and a files/plist-base.rm file. These are the basic files that are installed if all knobs are set to not build extra features.

Makefile usage

The port Makefile must contain the line:

  KDE_BUILD_PLIST= yes

in order to activate the feature.

Then, for each knob which activates extra installed files, a line:

  PLIST_APPEND+= plist.foo

is added if the knob is activated. This tells the plist-build system that there is a file file/plist.foo containing files to install, and optionally a file files/plist.foo.rm containing instructions to remove directories on port uninstall. If this second file is empty, it can be omitted.

Creating the base files

Creating the extra plist.* files

For each knob that can add files or directories to the installation, do:

When you are done, be sure to remove the p and p.rm files.

Remaking the plist

There is a target called kde-plist in bsd.kde.mk which will rebuild the ${WRKDIR}/plist file from the components based on the knobs specified.

Where's the magic hidden?

Look at the bottom of bsd.kde.mk to see how this all happens.

 LocalWords:  var DESTDIR pkg Exp