Several of the FreeBSD port maintenance tools, such as
portupgrade(1), rely on a database called
/usr/ports/INDEX which keeps track of
such items as port dependencies. INDEX
is created by the top-level
ports/Makefile via
make index, which descends into each port
subdirectory and executes make describe
there. Thus, if make describe fails in any
port, no one can generate INDEX, and many
people will quickly become unhappy.
It is important to be able to generate this file no
matter what options are present in
make.conf, so please avoid doing things
such as using .error statements when (for
instance) a dependency is not satisfied. (See
Section 12.15, “Avoid Use of the .error
Construct”.)
If make describe produces a string
rather than an error message, you are probably safe. See
bsd.port.mk for the meaning of the
string produced.
Also note that running a recent version of
portlint (as specified in the next section)
will cause make describe to be run
automatically.
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sent to <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>.
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