There are a number of error messages that MacPorts might print during the normal course of events. Checksum errors, fetch failures, port misbehaviors. Who should be the audience for these error messages -- the end user or the portfile developer? I would argue the former but we currently have some messages that target the latter.
Take, for example, destroot violations. If a port violates the mtree and does not indicate that it wants to do this via "destroot.violate_mtree yes", MacPorts prints: Warning: violation by <path> Warning: <port> violates the layout of the ports-filesystems! Warning: Please fix or indicate this misbehavior (if it is intended), it will be an error in future releases! This message is clearly written to the portfile developer. If the port does indicate that it will install files outside of the mtree, MacPorts says: Warning: <port> requests to install files outside the common directory structure! This message is presumably written to the end user so that they know files have been installed in a nonstandard location, though MacPorts does not tell the user where. I recall at least one bug report from a user who did not realize that this message did not constitute a bug but correct normal behavior. I guess the word "Warning" and the exclamation point make it sound like a bug that needs to be reported. The patch in #15514 [1] adds a new message the end user could see: Warning: reinplace <regexp> didn't change anything in <file> This information is meant for the portfile developer. The developer should either fix the regexp (so that it replaces what it was designed to replace), or remove it (because the file no longer needs that replacement), or indicate via a new flag to the reinplace command that it's ok that no replacement occurred (for example see the mysql5 port which does a reinplace across a glob of files, not all of which contain the string to be replaced). The end user doesn't need to know all this, of course; the end user just needs to be told to file a ticket. I think we should write error messages to the end user, not the portfile developer. I think we should also have a new page in the wiki called ErrorMessages, where we can list the error messages that MacPorts might print along with explanations of what the portfile author should do about them. We would describe mtree violations and ineffectual reinplaces and checksum failures (the checksum failure discussion would move to this new page from the FAQ). Or we could put all these in the FAQ page, maybe in a new section for error messages. [1] http://trac.macports.org/ticket/15514 _______________________________________________ macports-dev mailing list macports-dev@lists.macosforge.org http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macports-dev