RFE: Move portgroups into the ports tree

[raimue@…]

Instead of keeping the portgroups in our base, they should be distributed with the ports tree itself. This makes updating them much easier. Also, they are more related to the ports tree than to base.

[raimue@…]

As also said on #14482, I am in favor of adding an .resources directory to the source tree to store the port groups and other metadata related directly to the ports tree.

[jmr@…]

Everything under ${prefix}/share/macports/resources/ should really be synced along with the ports tree.

[nox@…]

Cc Me!

[nox@…]

Why ".resources"? Why an hidden directory?

[jmr@…]

I agree that .resources may not be the best name. But that's a minor detail.

[raimue@…]

I chose a hidden directory to have a simply way to avoid portindex recursing into it. Also, this clearly distinguishes between port categories and special directories. Do you think a hidden directory will cause problems? rsync and svn can handle that just fine.

[ryandesign@…]

If it's not a port directory (and the resources directory isn't), then it shouldn't be in the dports directory. :) It should be at the same level as the dports directory IMHO.

[raimue@…]

In my opinion the port groups are part of the inidividual ports tree they are made for. They are necessary to build the ports in this tree and should be distributed with this tree. I already implemented a way to find the resources/config/metadata (whatever we want to call it) directory for a ports tree on the variant-descs-14482 branch.

This way it would also be possible to use port groups in external third-party trees. For example, you can also add an older version of a port using an older version of a port group into their own tree, without any conflicts to the official tree.

My intention is that they should be synced from the same URL. A possible solution would be to create dports/ports/ and dports/resources/ to separate them both.

Just as a side note, originally I thought about distributing port groups as ports, but that creates a chicken and egg problem. A Portfile can't add a dependency on another port providing the group, because the Portfile cannot be parsed successfully without the group. So the only way to distribute it within the tree is to designate a special directory there.