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 12.16, “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.
This, and other documents, can be downloaded from http://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/
For questions about FreeBSD, read the
documentation before
contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.