Re: RFC on HOMEPAGE inclusion in INDEX

[David Snyder <dasnyderx@yahoo.com>]

Jolan Luff wrote,
> On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 01:26:03PM +0000, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> 
>>> Marc Espie <espie@nerim.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>
>>>> > I don't have a firm opinion, one way or the other.
>>>> > Having HOMEPAGE around is useful.
>>>> > having another field in INDEX makes it even longer.
>>
>>> 
>>> I have at one time or the other used various fields of INDEX when
>>> retrieving information, but I can't remember ever thinking "damn,
>>> I wish the home page was there, too".
> 
> 
> I think it's more relevant than "Index".  Index is only really relevant
> to me if it's in the x11 category and I don't have x11 installed,
> otherwise it's just virtual categories in the ports tree that have no
> bearing on my use of them.  Whereas HOMEPAGE might have screenshots or
> something so I can get a feel of what Mozilla looks like before I decide
> to compile it for a couple hours.
Gentlemen,

I would like to echo and reinforce Jolan's remarks as regards the 
HOMEPAGE giving you a pointer to somewhere I (and other users) can get a 
'feel' for a port before installing it.  This was the primary reason 
that I wrote the patch to bsd.port.mk and port/Makefile.  Too many times 
I've done a 'make search {key,name}=<something>' and the result came up 
with a terse and, frankly, unhelpful INFO message.  With the HOMEPAGE 
listed, I can immediately go to the homepage of the port (if there is 
one) to get a better understanding of the port without tearing apart the 
port's Makefile in order to get the same info.  I hope these remarks 
aren't out-of-line, but I feel the payoff for a user vs. the marginal 
increase in INDEX size (~67K increase) is a good tradeoff.

David