Subject: How to depend on an HTTP server?
To: None <tech-pkg@netbsd.org>
From: Amitai Schlair <schmonz@schmonz.com>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 11/19/2001 23:29:10
I'm packaging sqwebmail <URL:http://www.inter7.com/sqwebmail/>, a webmail
program that runs as a CGI. The Makefile has the following goop:

DEPENDS+=        apache>=1.3.22:../../www/apache

CONFIGURE_ARGS+= --enable-cgibindir=${LOCALBASE}/libexec/cgi-bin \
                 --enable-imagedir=${LOCALBASE}/share/httpd/htdocs/images \
                 --enable-mimetypes=${LOCALBASE}/etc/httpd/mime.types

But this package shouldn't really depend on Apache; it just wants an HTTP
server capable of executing CGI programs, and wants to know where to install
the executable and images so that it runs and displays properly.

There's a meta-pkgs/web-server, but it isn't what I want here. I'm thinking
it would be handy if there were a meta-package (and/or perhaps some logic in
bsd.pkg.mk, a la USE_JAVA) that provides WWW_DOCROOTDIR, WWW_CGIBINDIR,
WWW_CONFDIR and the like.

What's the right way to do this?

Thanks,

- Amitai