On Sep 11, 2018, at 01:34, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
>>>>> * Where can I get a concise and up-to-date description of
>>>>> portfiles? `portfiles.7' seems to be heavily out of date...
>>>>
>>>> What would you like to know?
>>>
>>> A list of all available variables/keywords, with a description.
>>
>> Yup, that's supposed to be what's in the guide and the manpage.
>
> I see that the guide contains much more details; hopefully, the
> transition to AsciiDoc will yield a uniform output again in the near
> future.
Converting the guide from docbook xml to asciidoc (and converting the remaining
manpages to asciidoc) will make them easier to edit, but won't automatically
cause information that's in one document to appear in another; someone still
needs to manually do that.
>> There are also many portgroups (similar concept to include files
>> in C), which, when included into a port, may add new variables or
>> keywords of their own. About half of the portgroups are documented
>> in the guide.
>
> And it would be great if the other half gets added too. Speaking as
> the FreeType maintainer, it costs me an incredible amount of time to
> document the stuff I'm going to add or change – progress in FreeType
> is thus quite slow since the non-programming tasks are so huge...
Yes, it would be great if the remaining portgroups were documented. It would be
great if most of the guide were rewritten, in fact. But as you say it will take
an incredible amount of time. I've wished for years that I could find the time
to do it, but I haven't, and nobody else has stepped up to do it either.