Re: a package without a source tarball?

[Geert Hendrickx <ghen%telenet.be@localhost>]

On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 10:04:28AM -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> I've been asked to create a package when there doesn't seem to be an
> easily-accessible source tarball.  All that's available -- see
> http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-facebookchat/ -- is an SVN repository.
> I've found other examples of packages based on googlecode stuff; they
> generally pull in a .bz2 file.  However, the corresponding URL here
> simply pulls in a compiled version for Linux.
> 
> The official way to get the source is to use svn.  In theory, I suppose
> I could add a dependency for devel/subversion, and override fetch to do
> that.  That strikes me as, umm, not the greatest idea...
> Alternatively, I could have a pre-fetch that pulled in each individual
> file (there aren't very many) via http and built a tarball, while
> relying on the distinfo checksum for version control.  That would be
> faster, but only slightly more aesthetic.  Any better suggestions?


There is infrastructure to pull sources from svn in pkgsrc-wip:
wip/mk/svn-package.mk

The alternative is to periodically roll your own tarball, as Adrian
suggested.

        Geert